


If the Darkness Lasts

by Seascribe



Category: The Eagle | The Eagle of the Ninth (2011)
Genre: Apocalypse, Canon-Era, F/M, M/M, Multi, OT3, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-27
Updated: 2012-03-27
Packaged: 2017-11-02 14:30:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 43,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/370028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seascribe/pseuds/Seascribe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the dead begin to rise up and walk, Marcus, Cottia, and Esca must leave behind the little farm on the Downs and learn how to build a new life together out of the ruins of the world they once knew.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I opted not to use the archive warnings, but you should know that this story contains violence/gore, minor character death (including several children), and underage sexuality (Cottia is 16-17, and an adult within the setting of the story). I think the gore is less disturbing than what you would find in most zombie movies, but of course your mileage may vary. 
> 
> I've assumed that Cottia was actually a little older than Marcus guessed her to be when they met.
> 
> This story would not have happened without massive amounts of brainstorming, handholding, and feedback from many people, particularly Sibila_cantus, Ninja_orange, and Tracy7307. Also, I am immensely grateful to KW and KB, who both took the time to read the book so that they could help with this story, and then spent hours and hours fixing things that were broken. Any remaining errors are entirely my own. 
> 
> And huge, huge thanks to Motetus, who made a beautiful banner and seven (!!!!) gorgeous pieces of art for this story. I am floored by how awesome they are. Her art masterpost can be found [here.](http://motetus.livejournal.com/102339.html)

 

It is Cub that first notices something is wrong. He makes a nervous, whimpering sound, and goes to butt his head against Marcus' knee, before pacing nervously through the house until he has found Cottia and Esca. Not until he has herded them all into the garden does he stop circling, leaving the three of them standing together, wondering what is bothering him. The hair along the back of Marcus' neck stands up, and Esca's eyes are wide, like a spooked horse's. Cottia's knuckles are white on the handle of the sharp kitchen knife she has been using to chop vegetables.

The air is still, quiet, and the sky is cloudless. It is a beautiful day. 

The wind rustles through their hair, and over the hill by the hawthorne tree, Marcus sees someone. Lucius, perhaps, from the nearby farm. Marcus has been expecting him for several days to come and work out a price for the breeding of Celer with his broodmares.

On another day, Marcus would step forward and hail him, meet him on the hill. But today, his stomach churns, and he finds he wants only to run, to drag Cottia and Esca into the villa and bar the door, with his sword in hand. He forces himself to breathe calmly, waiting for the figure to draw close enough to recognise. A bead of sweat rolls down his back.

 _Mithras_ , he thinks, the beginning of a supplication, but he is not sure how to continue. Surely there is nothing happening that needs the god's intervention. Cub acting strangely is not cause for alarm, and it is only that setting Marcus' teeth on edge. Only that. 

But Esca beside him is trembling with barely contained energy, rocking from foot to foot, and Cottia's face is pale under her hair, as though she has seen a ghost. It is not only Marcus whose mind is uneasy.

It is Lucius, Marcus can see now. He recognises the heavy line of his chin and the roll of his walk. Only Lucius, come to bargain over a cup of wine. He will stay and share the meal with them, and they will forget all about this strange, terrifying moment in the yard, when Marcus had been sure for a moment that before ere long Cottia's knife would be spilling blood on their soil.

" _Salve_ ," he croaks, his voice harsh as a raven's. It does not carry. " _Salve_ , Lucius!" He tries again, and Lucius raises an arm in greeting.

The pound of Marcus' heart is slowing. All is well. Perhaps a goose had crossed over his grave, as Sassticca had sometimes liked to say. The thought does not make him smile, as it usually would.

"Marcus, don't!" Cottia says when he steps forward to open the gate for Lucius. Without a word, Esca turns and strides into the house. Cub whines and frets until he comes back, bearing his sword and Marcus' gladius.

"What is this?" Lucius says, staring at them with open shock. Marcus feels suddenly embarrassed, to greet a friend with a show of weapons, with even his wife brandishing her chopping knife like a barbarian warrior queen.

"Do you not feel it?" Cottia demands. "There is something wrong. Something is happening."

"It felt like this when we rose to fight the Eagles," Esca says, low, so that only Marcus and Cottia will hear. "Exactly like this, like my skin is too tight and there is not enough air in all the world." He would not speak of that time lightly, Marcus knows. Something is indeed very wrong. But there is nothing that he can see, nothing to fight or guard against, and Lucius clearly thinks them all quite mad.

"It is only a moment's foolishness," Marcus says, giving Cottia a significant look. "Forgive us, my friend. Come in and sit, and we will have a cup of wine."

Lucius looks sceptically at him, but is well-mannered enough to grasp Marcus' forearm when he offers it, before following them into the atrium. Marcus refuses to allow himself a final, doubting glance over his shoulder.

Cub paces fretfully the length of the atrium, coming often to stare anxiously into Marcus' face, until Esca says, "I will take him. Perhaps it is feeding that he wants." Marcus does not think so, for Cub has grown quite fat of late, from eating too well and not running enough on the hunt, but he does not say anything. He does not want Esca to leave his sight, nor the safety of the tiny villa, but he cannot put that into words, not here in front of Lucius. In any case, Esca is strong and watchful; he does not need Marcus to mind him. These thoughts are already well-formed before it occurs to Marcus how absurd they are. Here on their own land, there is no need for Esca to be watchful, for there is nothing to fear. But there is no need for him to carry his sword with him either, and still he had been buckling it around his waist as he went. Marcus cannot quite bring himself to set aside his own.

Cottia brings wine and cheese and olives, and withdraws to the kitchen. But no sooner has Lucius taken his first sip of wine than she is back again, pacing the atrium floor, looking out the window for Esca. Though she has laid aside her kitchen knife, Marcus sees that she has strapped his old soldier's dagger around her waist. 

He does not dare chastise her for it. And in truth, it is taking all of his power to stay reclined at the table with Lucius. He shrugs, as if to say, "Women, eh?" and Lucius nods in sage agreement. Cottia paces, and Marcus tries to focus on his friend, on the business they are trying to conduct.

"You would not find a better beast, though you could trace his lines to the royal stable of the Iceni," Marcus says. Usually, Cottia sniffs in disdain when he makes such grand claims, but today she is silent. Whatever the truth of the comparison, Celer is the pride and joy of their farm, and Marcus is convinced that before too many years are out, he will be much in demand as a stud. Lucius will know that, as all of their neighbours do, but Marcus' mind is only half on their conversation.

His friend strives vainly to maintain normalcy, despite Marcus' hand wrapped around the hilt of his sword.

"My Sticte would bear foals that would be a credit to any royal stable," Lucius offers. "If you will let me put him to her this season, I will give you two hundred sesterce, and another three hundred if the foal is well-formed." It is a good offer, although there are other neighbours who might offer more and better, if it came down to bidding. But Lucius has proved a good friend from the first, when the farm was naught but a tiny collection of wattle-and-daub huts. It was Lucius who helped to tile the neat red roof and bring in the first harvest, with no guarantee but Marcus' word for the loan of his labour.

"Done," Marcus says. "And gladly. Shall we plan for your return in two days?"

Lucius beams at him, all unease and discomfort forgotten. "Very good, my dear Marcus. I will be back for him then, with the agreement drawn up."

Suddenly, Marcus wishes he would not leave, that he would remain a bastion of normalcy amidst the crackling anxiety filling the villa. "Will you dine with us? Cottia would be glad to have you, I know, and to hear more about your stock."

Lucius bites his lip, looking over to where Cottia is still pacing.

"Perhaps...another time would be more auspicious," he murmurs graciously. "And we must have you over to dinner as well; Calida is fairly pining for company of late. And the little one is grown so big, you will hardly recognise her."

"I'm sure it would be a pleasure," Marcus agrees. "Until then, give Calida my best. We will see if it cannot be arranged soon."

He recollects himself enough to walk his friend to the gate, and does not think twice of it to double check the latch, though it is common enough for them to leave it open entirely. The sun is slanting down towards evening. It will be almost full dark by the time Lucius reaches his own gate. Marcus ignores the shiver that thought sends rippling down his spine.

"Did you strike a good bargain?" Esca asks, when Marcus comes round the edge of the stable to find him cutting chunks of meat for Cub, who is only half-interested.

"Aye." He kneels down stiffly to scritch at Cub's ears. "Are you still high-strung, my friend?" Cub glances warily around, standing stiff-legged and fierce, and Marcus glances up at Esca. "What do you suppose has gotten into him?"

Esca shrugs. "Who can say? I know only that it is the same with me, and with Cottia too. You are none too easy, yourself." 

Marcus shakes his head. "But I do not know why. Lucius does not see anything amiss."

"No more do I. But that does not mean my stomach is not in knots all the same."

"A storm on the way, perhaps," Marcus suggests. But the sky above is bright and clear as ever, and there have been storms before, in the few months they have lived here, and he has never felt like this before any of them. And it would take much more than a storm to remind Esca of those old battles.

"Perhaps," Esca agrees. "Let us go inside by the fire, at least. If there is something to come, it will come no matter how much we stand here fretting."

Cub follows close behind and settles down by the doorway, with his ears pricked warily. None of them feel much like eating, and though Cottia is no longer pacing, her hand drifts compulsively to check the dagger at her belt. Marcus cannot stop glancing at it. He wants to ask her what she thinks is happening, wants for her to explain it to him, but he knows that she will not be able to, any more than Esca could, any more than he himself can.

Esca rises unbidden to accompany him when he goes round the barn and gate before bed. The ponies are restless, rolling their eyes, the velvet pink skin of their nostrils flared warily. But it is not so much different than if there is a storm on the way. Marcus' leg does not ache tellingly, but perhaps there is nothing to be concerned with in that. He should be happy if it never foretold a storm again! And yet, he still feels a hot, awful prickle between his shoulders, and he can almost smell the fear.

"We will feel better in the morning," Esca says, putting a hand on his shoulder in a firm grip. Marcus can tell he does not believe it himself, but the reassuring touch makes him feel better all the same. "It is only an autumn storm brewing, as you said. I will be easier in my mind if the roof has been through a gale or two before the winter sets in." 

Marcus smiles wanly at him and reaches up to squeeze his hand. He wants very much to kiss Esca, and not long ago, he would have done it without hesitation. But things are not so simple now. For a moment, Marcus allows himself to imagine it, how Esca's lips would part beneath his own, his breath coming faster as Marcus pressed him back against the stable wall. It would be so easy, after that, to follow Esca back to his narrow room and strip him out of his tunic, finding him unchanged since that last time in Calleva, every beloved detail there to be relearned by Marcus' hands and eyes and lips.

Easy, but for Cottia alone in the next room. Marcus would not hurt her for all the world, and though she had said once that she would not mind it, that had been before she spoke to Marcus as his wife. But even if her thoughts are the same still, that is no excuse for Marcus to succumb to intemperance.

He lets his hand drop slowly back to his side and forces himself to meet Esca's eyes, knowing full well that his thoughts have not been any secret. The quick, dry press of Esca's mouth against his own does not come as any real surprise, and Marcus does not even try to pretend that he wishes it undone as they walk together back to the house.

In their bed that night, Marcus sinks down beside Cottia, spent, his breath panting over the curve of her shoulder. She sighs, and Marcus is not sure whether that means she liked it or not, though he had been very careful. He cannot quite bring himself to ask. Instead, he tells her what Lucius had said about Calida hoping to have a visit from them soon. 

"I have been meaning to go see her," Cottia says. "We have just been so busy! But I promised that I would bring her Sassticca's recipe for savillum."

"Have you finally learned how to make it then, and not told me?" Marcus teases. Her last few attempts had been memorable only for being the poorest efforts at dessert-making that Marcus could call to mind. 

Cottia swats at his arm. "She is going to help me with it! And if you are not careful, I shall give it all to Esca and save none for you." 

"Esca does not like savillum," Marcus says, throwing his arm over her waist. 

"Well, I am sure Cub does!" Cottia retorts through her laughter. 

Marcus grins and kisses her cheek, feeling his heart lighter than it has been all day, the creeping sense of foreboding drawn back to the very edges of his awareness. Sleep comes easily, with Cottia curled up in his arms, the echoes of her laughter fading in his mind.

Dawn is beginning to show in the crack between the shutters when the rain starts to patter down onto the roof tiles, pulling Marcus gently out of his sleep. It is a slow, sullen rain, not the fierce gale they half-expected, but Marcus’ heart does not beat any easier in his breast for that. If anything, he is disappointed—at least a proper storm would have been an explanation. This thin drizzle serves only to make him feel claustrophobic.

He hears Esca’s footfalls in the atrium and goes to join him.

“Not a storm, then,” Marcus says on their way down to the stream to haul water for Cottia.

“Not yet.”

The rain is just enough to keep them cooped up inside after they have tended to the animals. Marcus goes over the accounts for a time, but he cannot keep his mind on it. 

“I wonder if this is not how they felt at Vesuvius,” he mutters. Esca gives him a confused look, but Cottia sucks in her breath sharply, her fingers spread hornwise. Marcus wishes he had not said anything.

“Well, there are no volcanoes in Britain,” he says, trying to lighten the frown that creases her forehead.

“Do you stop talking that way before the gods take it as a challenge,” she admonishes, and disappears into the kitchen without another word. Marcus can hear her crashing her bowls together and pacing as she prepares dinner.

Marcus spends the rest of the afternoon helping Esca to sharpen the blades of his hunting spears. The deer will be in the rut soon, and it will be good to have new edges on the blades when they ride out.

“The rain is easing,” Esca says, cocking his head. At his feet, Cub lifts his head and growls softly. “So it was not that which had the wolf so anxious.”

“We will see Lucius again tomorrow,” Marcus says. “Perhaps he will bring news.” But Lucius had had no inkling of anything amiss yesterday. For the first time, Marcus begins to wonder if perhaps there is a curse on their land, or if it is only that they are all slowly going mad.

When he and Esca go to bring the ponies in from pasture, they find them standing in a tight knot down the valley. They toss their manes and sidle in agitation when their masters draw close, even Clara, who is one of the most affectionate mounts Marcus has ever known. But she is no easier in the barn, and rolls her eyes at Marcus when he makes to go in and clean away the mud that has caked round her hooves. He would not put it past her to kick him if he insisted.

“It will not hurt her too badly to stay that way overnight,” Esca says. “She will stand that better than you will stand a kicked shin.”

"Will you think me very much the fool if I ask that you bed down tonight in our room?" Marcus asks, when they have double-checked the gate. "My stomach will be easier if we are all of us together." There is no reason why it should matter, since they have yet to find cause to fear anything untoward, but Marcus still looks earnestly into Esca's face.

"Not at all," Esca says, gently. "I think that I too would be easier in my mind."

Cottia is in her shift already, with her hair spilling loose over her shoulders as she prepares the bread dough for tomorrow's breakfast, and she watches with an inscrutable frown as Marcus helps Esca move his narrow little mattress to their room. Cub paces back and forth, hackling and whining. They do not put it across the doorway, as it had been in the little cell in Calleva, but right beside the bed Marcus and Cottia share. Esca bars the window shutters without being asked.

"There is room enough on the bed," Cottia says to Esca.

"I am fine this way," Esca tells her, and Marcus cannot help but think that there is an element to their exchange that he is not privy to.

It is often that way between the two of them, and usually it does not bother Marcus overmuch, for their conversations are their own and he takes it only as evidence that they are content here in one another's company. It bothers him now, but he tamps down the feeling, folding his braccae over the back of the chair and asking Esca if he has enough blankets.

"I am fine," Esca says again. "Good night, Marcus. Cottia." He has kept his sword by him, lying in its sheath by his head. Cottia puts her knife on the bedside table, and Marcus' sword is propped up just by it. It is half in his mind to leave the lamp lit, but he quashes that idea quickly. He is not some half-grown boy, afraid of the dark.

Cub's green eyes shine eerily in the dark when Marcus extinguishes the lamp, and Marcus shudders, though he has seen those eyes at the foot of his bed for more than two years now, and never before found them anything but a comfort. He closes his eyes and presses his face into Cottia's hair, counting her breaths until a fitful sleep takes him.

It is a long and restless night, and every time Marcus wakes and glances towards Esca, he sees the green gleam of Cub's eyes, worried and unsleeping. Cottia tosses restlessly, and both she and Esca murmur uneasily in their sleep. It pains Marcus to hear it, more even than his own unrest, for they sound so frail and unhappy, but he cannot find it in his heart to wake them. So he blocks it out as best he can and holds Cottia close, praying for dawn to come quickly. He must fall asleep again, for the next time he opens his eyes, there is not enough gloom left for the wolf's eyes to glow, and he can see the tense, unhappy expression on Esca's face, even from here and in the dim light.

Cottia stirs against his chest and says thickly, "Is all well?"

"Aye," Marcus says, kissing her forehead. But it does not feel like he is telling the truth, and he knows that she does not need for him to say it to understand.

They eat their breakfast silently, for there is nothing to say that they have not already said, and nothing to do but get on with the day's chores. The sky is a bright, hard blue, and the wind is brisk, carrying a cold hint of the days to come. In the hawthorne tree, a blackbird lets forth a joyful burble of song. Marcus' heart lifts at the sound, and he whistles back and forth with it a few times, until more pressing matters of worms and seeds draw the bird away.

With the sun on his face and Esca beside him in the field, settling into the rhythm of their work, it is hard to remember yesterday's anxiety. A man's nerves can bear only so much strain, and without any obvious cause for alarm, Marcus' have finally begun to ease. At midday, Cottia brings them heavily-watered wine and sits with them in the dirt while they take a moment's rest.

For a moment, Marcus feels a cold prickle between his shoulders, and he glances uneasily around. But then Cottia is laughing at something Esca has said, her head tipped back so that her hair is a burnished river falling over her shoulders, and Marcus finds himself thinking only that she is beautiful, and that he is so glad she is happy, here with them--

Somewhere in the field, Cub lets out a wild, throbbing howl that freezes the breath in Marcus' lungs and makes the hair on his arms stand up. Esca is on his feet in an instant, sword drawn. Marcus remembers how ridiculous he had felt, going out to plow a field with his gladius buckled around his waist, but not now. The hilt is slick in his palm.

"Go back to the house, Cottia," Marcus says in a low voice, as Cub comes crashing through the grass to Marcus' side, hackling and growling, the white showing all around his eyes.

"I will not!" Cottia says, and the knife in her hand does not waver.

Esca is scanning the horizon. "Look there, over the hill," he says. For all that Marcus can see, it does not seem to be any cause for Cub's distress; there is only one figure there, moving down the slope of the hill, a dark-haired, stocky figure.

"Lucius?" Marcus breathes, and it does not make any sense. It is Lucius, but there is something not quite right about him. The man Marcus knows walks like a soldier, purposeful and swift, with his head up and with no thought but to get from where he is to where he is going. This figure moves more like a child on a walk in a meadow, with no real goal. And at Marcus’ feet, Cub has not stopped his growling.

"Shall I hail him?" Marcus asks, and as one Esca and Cottia hiss, "No!" Esca begins to inch back towards the villa, motioning for Cottia and Marcus to follow.

"Better not to be in the open while this unfolds," he says. _Whatever this is_ , Marcus thinks, with fear churning in his belly. He falls into line behind Cottia, never taking his eyes from the figure of his friend coming down the hill.

"Please, go into the house," Marcus says again, and his mind is suddenly full of a horrific vision of Cottia, kneeling at his feet just as Esca's mother had knelt at Cunoval's, her blood spilling down the blade of his knife. That will not happen; it is only Lucius, not some invading army. There is no cause to be thinking such thoughts. But Marcus cannot clear them from his mind, even as he and Esca stand in the doorway, with Cub between them, waiting for the thread to break.

Esca is rocking uncomfortably from foot to foot, his breath panting harsh through his nose. "Steady, my friend," Marcus murmurs. Esca gives him a brisk nod.

Marcus can see the moment that Lucius--for he cannot think of the figure as anything else, even though it is increasingly clear that if it is his friend, then something is gravely wrong--spots them there in the doorway, because his step takes up a little of the old soldier's directness, though he does not seem to be moving any faster.

He reaches the gate to their little yard--Marcus has never been so glad that they had put off the building of a larger villa for the sake of having a solid barrier around their home--and Marcus can see his face clearly in the bright noonday sun. It is not Lucius' face. Oh, to be sure, the black stubble on his cheeks is the same, and the sprinkling of grey in his hair. But the full lips are not smiling and there is no light in the dark eyes. It is a face as empty and blank as an abandoned fort, with no trace of his friend to be found in it.

"Name of Light," Marcus murmurs, clinging to his calm with both hands. "Esca, what has happened to him?"

Esca's face has gone pale, his eyes huge and horrified. "That is no ghost," Esca says. He does not need to say what Marcus already knows, that it is no living man either. "See how he leaves prints on the grass?" At least that means their swords might do some good, if it comes to that. Marcus prays that it will not. Behind him, Cottia knocks over a piece of crockery and curses, but Marcus does not dare turn around to look at her.

The thing with his friend's face fumbles at the latch on the gate and marches on, until Marcus can see the whites of his eyes and the unnatural, limp drape of his arms.

"Lucius?" He cannot help himself; he calls his friend's name pathetically, hoping that it is some joke, against everything his mind and body are telling him. "Do you not recognise me?" For the briefest of moments, Marcus thinks that he sees some faint spark of recognition in the man's eyes, some flicker of life in that horribly slack face. "It is Marcus Aquila, Lucius."

By his side, Esca says, "Marcus--" and then, Cub, driven beyond all endurance, charges out from between them, sinking his teeth into Lucius' throat. It is the first time Marcus has ever seen Cub offer violence to anything off the hunting trail.

Lucius falls, and Cub turns his blood-stained muzzle towards his master. On the ground, Lucius' limbs writhe, and he staggers to his knees. Marcus has faced many things in battle, but he has never, ever seen anything to prepare him for this. Esca makes a horrible, retching noise, but stands firm by his side.

"To me, Cub!" Marcus shouts. "Here, to me!" The young wolf obeys, slinking back from the monstrous figure as it rises to its feet and ambles towards them, uncaring that its throat has been torn out and blood is spilling thickly down its breast.

Marcus hears Cottia praying in the background, her voice cracked and desperate, and he thinks, _Mithras, let it be mortal, let it die; father of my fathers, let me and mine survive this day._

It is, in the end, almost too easy. The swift arc of Marcus' gladius half severs the creature's neck on the first blow, and it crumples to the ground. Esca does not take any chances and hacks through the remaining bone and sinew, until he can kick the head away from the body, Lucius' face rolling over and over in the dirt until it fetches up against the gate and at last lies still.

Not since he was eighteen years old and just on the other side of his first battle, with a man's blood on his hands, has Marcus been ill after a fight. But now he finds himself heaving the contents of his stomach into the grass by the door. Somewhere nearby, he hears Esca doing the same. Cottia kneels by his side, putting her hands on his shoulders.

"Are you all right?" Her voice is thready, but she has kept the contents of her stomach down. Marcus sucks in a deep breath, and thinks that he has never been further from all right. He remembers the blank, empty look on his friend's face, above the gaping red wound in his throat, and gags again. "You are not hurt?" Cottia pleads, and Marcus forces himself to look at her.

"I am not," he agrees. "Esca! Esca, are you well?"

Esca straightens up, wiping the back of his wrist over his mouth. "I am not hurt," he says, and Marcus thinks that is the best that any of them can hope for right now. He wipes the blade of his gladius in the grass and accepts the hand that Esca stretches out to him.

"What...what happened to him?" Cottia says, rising to her feet and drawing her dagger again. She does not look at the body sprawled obscenely across her yard. 

What indeed? Marcus has heard tell of skin-changers, but he does not think that they are anything like this.

"It would be a strong magic to wipe away a man's spirit like that and keep him walking," Esca says, but Marcus does not think it was magic. It is not that he does not believe, although he is not of Esca's breed, to trouble with druids and spells, but who could possibly have a reason to cast magic on Lucius? They are still outdwellers here though, and Marcus has not known him long. If someone had a reason to curse him, it might be that Marcus would not know.

Perhaps he has offended the gods, somehow. Growing up, one of their neighbours had had an old, mad uncle possessed by a _lemur,_ and he had shouted and jerked until the malevolence was gone. There had been none of the terrifying emptiness that had swallowed up Lucius, but perhaps it would be different here, perhaps Lucius had slipped out of the way of things, so far away from Rome, had forgotten to make the proper sacrifices to the spirits of his family.

His family...

"I am going to see Calida and the children," Marcus says. "They deserve to know what has happened." 

"If they do not already," Cottia says bleakly, and Marcus wonders what she expects him to find at his friend's villa. "We will all go." Marcus cannot bring himself to protest. She is like to be as safe going with them as she would be if she stayed here, and he cannot pretend that he would not feel better to have her and Esca by his side.

"I should clean up the wolf, before we leave," Esca murmurs. "He is like to scare the children."

For his part, Marcus only hopes that they are alive to be scared. He glances at Lucius' body and shudders. 

"We cannot leave him like this," Marcus says. Surely Lucius has already suffered enough; the least Marcus can do is to give his friend some dignity in his death, and Calida is owed the chance to give her husband a proper funeral. Cottia brings him a clean blanket to shroud the body, and then Marcus goes to saddle the horses and bring the cart around.

He had wondered if the animals would calm, now that the storm had finally broken, but they are still shivery and wide-eyed with fear, even before he tethers Cottia's mare to the cart and leads her round to take up Lucius' shrouded body. Cub too, though he looks much less fierce with the fur around his muzzle washed clean, is no less uneasy.

"What more could there possibly be to happen?" Marcus says, low, to Esca, and his friend gives a humourless snort of laughter.

"For my part, I pray that we do not find out."


	2. Chapter 2

They do not see a single person, alive or otherwise, on the ride to Lucius' villa. From afar, it looks perfectly normal. There is a faint column of smoke rising from the chimney, and no signs of any fight or upset. And yet, it seems unnaturally quiet. Lucius had been a prosperous man, with many slaves and hired labourers. There are none of them to be seen, nor any sign of Calida, her women, or the children. Cub makes a low, mournful noise, not quite a howl.

"Do you both stay close by," Marcus says. Clara sidles unhappily beneath him, and refuses to go any nearer to the villa, no matter how much Marcus coaxes. They hobble the ponies and close the last of the distance on foot, weapons drawn. 

In the yard, they find what has become of Lucius' slaves and labourers. Six men lay spilled in messy, clumsy heaps on the ground, two of them seemingly untouched, save that their heads have been severed. Another has had his head bashed into a pulpy ruin, his brains leaking into the grass. And the last three are bloodied and mauled, as though they have been got at by wild animals, their faces and torsos ravaged, scraps of bloody cloth clutched in their cold fingers, their necks hacked through like the others.

Marcus feels his belly surge with revulsion, and he is glad there is nothing left in it to sick up. Cottia's face is very white, but she steps carefully around the carnage and follows Esca to push open the door to the farmhouse.

"Oh," Esca says, and the tone of his voice makes the hair on Marcus' neck stand up. "Cottia, do not look. Go back outside."

But it is too late. Cottia makes a retching noise, stumbling backwards, and Marcus steadies her with a hand in the middle of her back, easing her against his side. She shudders, pressing her face against his shoulder, and then pulls away.

"You should not look," she says in a low, sick voice, staring at the doorway.

Given the carnage outside, Marcus has a good idea of what is within, but before he can say anything, Esca shouts, "Get back! Marcus, Cottia, into the yard!" backing through the doorway, with his sword levelled.

Marcus' skin prickles, and he steps forward to stand at Esca's shoulder, ready to meet whatever is coming. He thinks of what must be inside, and hopes that Lucius had been able to cut Calida's throat, before--before--he is not sure what, but better that for her and the unborn babe than the fate of the men behind them. Again he thinks of Cottia, of her blood spilled at his feet, and wonders if she would ask that of him, if the time comes.

The point of Esca's sword dips, and Lucius' little daughter comes stumbling out of the atrium, tripping over the threshold. Marcus takes a step forward, without thought. Lucilla does not cry, but picks herself back up again, turning her face towards them. She is a fair child, with round cheeks and blonde ringlets, like her mother's, but Marcus could never mistake this hollow-eyed spectre for the happy, giggling child he dandled on his knee at their last visit.

“It is the same as with Lucius,” Esca says, as Lucilla toddles slowly in their direction. “Do not let her get too close.”

"Surely she can do no harm," Marcus says, thinking still of that day when he had tickled Lucilla, and imagined when he would do the same for his and Cottia's own child. "She's only a child, Esca. Perhaps whatever afflicts her will pass, perhaps--"

Esca takes a step back, and puts a hand on Marcus’ arm to pull him with him, as the child keeps to her inexorable pace, barely a spear’s cast away now.

“Little bird, do you remember us?” Marcus asks her. “We came to visit back in the spring. Is your brother with you?” 

Lucilla stares blankly at him.

“There is nothing living behind her eyes,” Cottia says. “Marcus, I do not think she can understand you.”

Lucilla is very close now, and Marcus is about to take another step away when she suddenly bares her teeth at him, making a horrible shrieking noise and lunging forward with her little hands outstretched. Esca's face is twisted with anguish, but when Lucilla continues towards them, he breathes a prayer and runs her through. Surprise flickers over her face, her tiny mouth shaping a soundless word, and Marcus feels as though a fist has clenched around his heart.

" _Magna mater_ ," he breathes, but Lucilla's terrible blank eyes are fixed on him again and she begins to struggle forward along the length of Esca's blade, reaching out a chubby hand. Marcus' gladius takes her head off cleanly.

 _Forgive me, forgive me,_ he pleads silently, whether to Lucius and Calida or to any gods who might be listening, he does not know. Esca stares in horror at his blade, sunk into the frail chest, the gore smeared hot over his hands, the golden curls tangled in a spreading pool of blood.

"Come away, brother," Marcus says, putting a hand on Esca’s shoulder. Esca wipes his blade on the grass, trembling like a fly-stung horse under Marcus' hand. Cottia comes up against his other side, glancing warily around the yard.

"We should give them a pyre," Esca rasps. "They were our friends, whatever else has happened." Behind him, Cottia nods, and as much as Marcus wants only to be away from this place, he knows that they are right. It is all they can do, in hopes of soothing the spirits of Lucius and his family, and the least that their friends deserve. 

"Not all of Calida's women were inside," Cottia says. "Do you keep your eyes about you."

Esca finds the linen closet and brings out all of the sheets he can find, making two trips so that he does not have to put his sword down to carry them. "Is it that we build it here, in the courtyard?"

Marcus looks around at the ruined bodies. It would be fitting, to let the villa burn around its people, but something in him speaks against that idea. Perhaps Lucius has other family who will come to tend the place. He does not admit, even to himself, that perhaps the solid enclosed walls and strong doors might be useful, more secure than their own little villa. What has happened is a tragedy, but surely it will go no further.

"I think not," he says. He can tell from the look in Esca's eyes that he understands even what Marcus will not admit. "Will you go with Cottia to bring wood for the pyre? I will--I will tend to the bodies."

Cottia's chin goes up, and she says, "It is for me to do, to care for Calida and the little ones. You and Esca see to the men, and we will gather wood together."

Marcus wants to protest--Cottia should not have blood on her hands, should not have to kneel beside the body of her friend--but there is no sense in it, and they must needs be finished by dark. So he squeezes her hand and goes to help her bring out the bodies of Lucius' wife and son.

It had been hard, to slay the thing wearing his friend's face, and harder yet to kill the child-like monster. But watching Cottia cradle the child's severed head so that she can put it with the body and wrap it tenderly in the funeral clothes is the hardest thing Marcus has ever witnessed, in all of his days. In true death, it is only Lucilla, and nothing like a monster at all.

Cottia makes a soft keening noise as she tends to Calida's body, a funeral lament for her friend. There should have been other women to join her, other voices and hands to share the burden, but Cottia shoulders it alone, as courageous as any soldier. She keens for the children too, moving the tiny corpses in their linen shrouds to rest close by their mother's side, and for Lucius, whose body Marcus brings to be sent into the afterlife with his family. 

The flames leap up, and Marcus wipes the blood from Cottia's hands, taking care to get every drop, and wraps his arms around her while she shakes with sobs, his own tears dripping hot into her hair. Esca stands close by, his eyes constantly searching the yard.

"I am all right," Cottia says, dragging her mantle across her face. "Marcus, I want to go home."

Esca nods wordlessly, reaching out as though to put a hand on her shoulder, but changing his mind at the last moment.

"We will take tonight to rest, and to mourn," Marcus agrees. He itches to do something, to ride to the next neighbour's holding and see if they have news, if they are alive, but the day is lengthening into evening, and it would be unwise. And he is very, very tired.

Riding away, Marcus thinks he sees movement amongst the outlying buildings of the villa, and he shudders.

"Do not look back," Esca advises. "You can do no more today."

That night, Marcus makes an offering to their household gods for the souls of Lucius and Calida and the children, for the men and women of their household. _Let them rest in peace,_ he asks. _Let this not be a blight upon me and mine. Let this be the end of it._ Behind him, Cottia and Esca offer supplication to their own gods, to Lugh the Light of the Sun and others that Marcus does not know, the incense that they have burned rising up to mingle with that from his own offering.

"I will take the first watch," Esca says, after their prayers are done. "Do you and Cottia get some sleep."

"Stay again with us," Marcus says. He does not say that he will not sleep soundly otherwise, but there is little doubt in his mind that Esca knows it well enough.

Cub settles by Esca's side for the first watch, and he twines his fingers in the wolf's thick fur, murmuring something to him under his breath. Cottia gropes for Marcus' hand and holds it tight.

"All will be well," Marcus says, loud enough that Esca will be able to hear too. He is not sure that he can believe it himself, but he does not find it hard to fall asleep, secure in the knowledge that Esca will let no harm come to them in the night.

Cottia takes the next watch, over Marcus' protests. "I can watch as well as you," she says fiercely, putting a hand on the hilt of her dagger. "Go back to sleep." Marcus is too tired to argue with her. Instead of going to his pallet, Esca lies down in the hollow that Cottia leaves, and Marcus leans into the familiar warmth of him without a second thought and falls immediately back to sleep.

Cottia rouses him a few hours before dawn for his watch, and Marcus slides out of bed, knowing that Esca will wake no matter how careful his movements. Cottia takes her own place in the bed again, and Marcus finds it feels strange and not entirely bad to watch them sleep side by side in the bed that he and Cottia share. Marcus shakes his head, and turns his attention to the yard, praying there will be nothing there to wake them over.

Dawn is lightening over the horizon before Cub starts awake, baying the alarm. "Quiet," Marcus says. Now, he hears it, a rhythmic bumping and scratching at the gate outside and--he strains to hear over the sound of his blood suddenly rushing in his ears--a low moan shuddering through the air. He remembers Lucilla's nurse, who had not been with the bodies of the other women, and cannot stop himself from imagining her at the gate, slack-faced and staring. But perhaps she is alive, perhaps she has somehow escaped the fate that befell the rest of Lucius' household, and she is here, injured, perhaps, but alive and in need of help. If that is so, maybe she will know what happened.

Esca and Cottia are stirring, woken by Cub's noise. "There is something outside," Marcus says. Cub is hackling and growling at the doorway, casting anxious looks at his master. Cottia reaches instantly for her dagger, as Esca climbs out of bed and buckles his swordbelt around his waist.

"If I tell you to stay here, will you obey?" Marcus asks of Cottia, knowing that no order will hold her if she is set on following. She glares at him, as fierce and eager as any young would-be warrior.

"Only if you call for me as soon as you see what is there." Marcus sighs. It is his charge to keep her safe, and he would rather spare her as much as possible of the fighting and horror. But if he and Esca fall, then it is not as though being inside these walls will give her much protection for very long. If that happens, perhaps it is better that she should be able to meet it face to face.

"All right. I will call for you. But you must stay here with Cub until then." Cottia nods grimly and takes up a post by the door, with a hand on Cub's great head, her dagger clenched tight in her fist.

"Do you be careful," she says, as they pass.

Esca, lighter on his feet than Marcus, takes the lead, pushing the main door open with the poker from the fire, lest there is something lurking in wait on the other side. But the yard is empty, save for a few clucking chickens and the rabbits in their hutch. It seems so perfectly normal that for a moment, Marcus wonders if perhaps he had imagined the noises in the night. But a shudder crawls down his spine, and across the still air, a ruined, sobbing moan carries to their ears. Esca points to the gate.

The sight of the two grey, implacable figures treading against the barrier is like a punch to the gut. Where Lucius and his daughter had still looked like themselves, with colour in their faces, these could not be mistaken for anything but bodies long dead. Their skin is slack and sunken, mottled grey. The woman is torn open the entire length of her arm; her hand is missing. She looks familiar to Marcus, even in death--Lucilla's nurse, as he had thought. He cannot remember her name. She reaches out her remaining clawlike hand, her mouth gaping wide on a rattling, death-shriek that is not quite human. Marcus, who has heard the cries of men mortally wounded in battle, with their limbs crushed or cut away, men holding their guts in with their hands as they died, wants to throw down his sword and cover his ears with his hands to escape that noise.

"Why does she not open the gate?" Esca asks. His voice is hushed, even though there is no one else who might hear.

Marcus shrugs. Lucius had been able to, so why not these people as well? He does not know, only that he is grateful for it. From inside, Cottia calls, "Marcus, I am coming out now."

The two spectral figures continue to press against the gate, their empty faces and grasping hands turned ever towards Marcus and Esca. "There are more of them," Marcus says in warning, and then, as Cub growls behind him, "Cub, stay. _Stay._ "

"Helena?" Cottia breathes, and murmurs a prayer. "Marcus, who is--was the man with her?"

"I have not seen him before," Marcus says, thinking back over all of the men who came to help with the building, Lucius' friends and clients and slaves.

"Perhaps he is a new labourer or a slave, and he does not--look like himself," Esca says, as though he hopes that Marcus will remember that he does know the man after all, that he is only another victim of whatever malady has befallen Lucius' family and not a portent of worse things to come.

"I do not know him," Marcus says, with a sick feeling in his belly. 

Cottia's eyes flicker from him to the horrors by the gate, her hand on the hilt of her dagger. 

"Can we do anything for them?"

Marcus wants only for them to be gone, to sever their heads from their necks and put an end to their moaning. He fears already that he will see their staring eyes in his dreams for many nights to come. 

"Nothing, I think, but to put them out of their misery as quickly as may be," he says, hoping that he does not sound the coward.

"If the gods have seen fit to punish them, is it wise to go thrusting in when we are not directly threatened?" Esca asks, spreading his fingers hornwise in the direction of the groaning spectres. "We do not know but that the same punishment may be passed on to us."

"I do not believe for a moment that they would not offer violence if the gate were to be opened," Marcus says. His mind flinches away from the memory of Lucilla struggling even in death to attack Esca. "Surely no god, British or Roman, would fault us for protecting our home." And their household has done nothing wrong, offered no offense; there could be no reason for any gods to visit punishment on them. But some treacherous voice in the back of Marcus' mind wonders if perhaps Lucius did not think those same things. 

Esca nods doubtfully, putting a reluctant hand to the hilt of his sword, but Cottia says, "Wait! Esca, will you try something? Bring your bow and arrow, and see if that will serve?"

Marcus looks at her in surprise. He had not expected his young wife to have much of an eye for battle tactics, but she is ever surprising him.

"It would be useful," Esca agrees, "to be able to dispatch them from a distance." 

"If, the gods forfend, there are indeed more of them," Marcus says, less out of optimism and more for the sake of any benevolent gods who might be paying them any mind. He is not at all sure any more that this ended with Lucius' family, and his mind flinches away from imagining what they might find at Titus' villa, or Aulus'. They should go into town--they should ride straight to Calleva, to Uncle Aquila--but Marcus reins in those thoughts and forces himself to be logical. There is a chance yet that all of this is only a terrible, isolated misfortune, and they cannot afford to leave the farm for anything but the direst need. He must be calm and rational, and see them through this.

Esca returns, with his bow strung and an arrow already nocked. "They do not seem to be subject to the same weaknesses as--as mortal men," he says, sighting down his arrow at the unknown male. "If it is only taking their heads off that will finish them, I do not know how much good this will do."

That first arrow passes cleanly through the man's neck. His moaning becomes a kind of choked gurgle, but he does not stop his futile pushing against the gate.

"Shall I try again?" Esca asks. "Perhaps through the eye; that is the only other weakness we have yet to attempt."

Now is as good a time as any to find out, Marcus supposes, while they are as safe and unhurried as they will ever be. "It is a difficult shot to make," he says.

"For a Roman soldier trained first to the sword, perhaps," Esca says, with a ghost of his teasing smile. "From here, for a hunter of the Brigantes, it is not so hard."

Esca's words are not empty boasting. His next shot goes cleanly through the creature's left eye, and it immediately crumples. Helena--the thing that had once been Helena--does not so much as blink, but only calls out her horrible moaning again, leaning further over the gate.

Marcus offers a prayer, wondering if there had been anything left of the person that man once was or if his soul had been already long gone to his gods. They should build a second pyre, Marcus thinks, and he prays that this one will be the last. Esca nocks another arrow, and finally, blessedly, the noise stops.

Cottia goes to retrieve the arrows, as Esca's shield-bearer might do if they were among the tribes and this was preparation for a battle. It is a strange thought, and Marcus shakes it off, occupying himself instead with thinking of how they should proceed from here.

Titus' villa is not so close as Lucius', but Marcus is determined that they should make the trip and hold off on making any further plans until they know more of what is happening.

"We will go straight to Calleva, afterwards, if we find cause," he promises Cottia, who is increasingly impatient to act.

"What more cause do you need, when only yesterday you chopped off the head of a man you called your friend?" Cottia cries. "Surely if there is news to be heard, it will be heard in Calleva. What of your uncle, and my family? Should we not make all haste to see that they are well?"

The memory of Lucius makes Marcus feel sick, and he cannot bear to think of his uncle in light of that. "Not without a plan, Cottia. And to plan, we must needs have more information. No, that is the end of it; I am adamant on this."

She clamps her mouth shut, her face pink with anger, and turns to go back inside. Marcus looks to Esca, not sure if he is looking for support for his position or for Esca to join with Cottia and overrule him, but whatever he is after, Esca is not going to give it to him.

"I will stand with you, whatever you decide," Esca says. "But perhaps you should remember that she is young, and not a soldier nor a warrior, for all her courage." He follows Cottia into the house, and Marcus hears the low murmur of their voices together as he goes about his preparations.

He should not have snapped at her; these last days have been hard enough for him and Esca. It is a testament to her strength of will that Cottia has so well withstood the horrors these days have brought, weathering them with more bravery than perhaps Marcus had any right to expect from her. He still mislikes the idea of making too much haste, but there had surely been a better way to bring Cottia around to his way of thinking. Esca is still talking to her, and Marcus hopes that by the time he has had his say, her anger will have burnt out. 

She does not say anything to him as they eat their morning meal or as they ride, and Marcus does not push the issue. Esca, too, is quiet. 

Nothing in the valley seems out of the ordinary, and on any other day, Marcus' heart would be glad to be out in fine weather, with Cottia and Esca by his side. But in their silence, his mind is occupied with forming scenario after scenario of what they might find at their destination, and trying to plan what to do next in each case. It is a futile, foolish exercise, but he finds himself turning back to it again and again, despite his best efforts. But none of his imaginings prepare him for what they actually find.

Titus' villa is gone. They see the smoke rising from far off, and as they draw nearer, the charred walls stark against the sky. The ponies refuse to go any closer, the smell of fire more than their frayed nerves can bear. Marcus has his suspicions as to what happened to the villa, and to the people who lived there, and hopes that whoever sent them to the afterlife had taken the time to give their souls the proper rites.

"If it is cause I was seeking, surely we have found it," he says. "There is enough time yet to ride to the village to see if there can be hands hired to mind the farm while we are away to Calleva."

"With Ceanatis and Vindex--gone, I do not think there are any labourers who left would take your coin, not in good faith, if they have seen the same things we have," Esca says. 

"We can be ready to leave by the dawn," Cottia says, and Marcus knows that she will not back down easily if he suggests that they take any longer.

It pains him to think of leaving the farm, their raw, beloved little farm that they have worked so hard to bring to prosperity, to make into a home for themselves and for the children who would come after. In his heart, it has already taken up all the space left by the loss of the farm in the Etruscan hills. Even if they are able to return straight home from Calleva, it is likely there will be losses among the livestock with no one to tend them, losses they can ill-afford. But he can see no other way. With Lucius and Titus and their households gone, there is nowhere else that they can turn for help to mind the place in their absence. They can hardly herd the animals with them to Calleva, and it is to Calleva that they must go.

"I could stay," Esca says softly. "I have not your reasons to go to Calleva."

"No!" Marcus scrubs a hand over his face, trying to quell the wrench of panic that seizes his heart at Esca's words. "No, whatever happens, we must stay together. If this turns out to be nothing, we will be back in a few days, and it may be that we will lose little enough. The buildings and land will always be there to come back to."

It is really not so bad as all that, Marcus thinks later, as he sets the animals out to pasture and bars the doors and windows. But in his heart of hearts, he does not believe that they will be riding back to the farm after a few days in Calleva. He lingers over the household gods, the bronzed _lares_ in the atrium and the little altar where Esca and Cottia make their offerings.

"Leave them," Esca says, coming up behind him and putting a hand on his shoulder. "They will watch over the place while we are gone, and be here to welcome us back."

Marcus leans into the comfort of his touch for a moment, wishing very much that he could have more, a few moments stolen away from the worry and planning, held safe in Esca's arms, but he cannot afford such weakness.

"I should go help Cottia to finish packing. " He pulls away, ignoring the look on Esca's face. It is not for Marcus to accept his comfort, no matter how much he would wish to. Esca lets him go without protest.

Cottia gives him a wan, forced smile when he comes to see what help she needs. "I am not glad to be leaving," she says after a while. "I did not want you to think that I love this place any less than you."

Marcus wants to say something to her, an apology or reassurance, anything, but he cannot find the words. She seems to understand, coming to lean against his side for a moment before going back to her work.

Dinner that night is hearty, rabbit stew and turnips and thick slabs of cheese, for with such uncertainty facing them, the least they can do is go into it with full bellies. The food will only spoil if left behind.

"What do you think we will find, in Calleva?" Cottia asks Marcus. With another woman, he might have thought she is seeking empty reassurances that all will be well, that they will find their troubles ended. But Cottia has never sought meaningless words from him.

"I do not know," Marcus says. "Sometimes, I think that we will find it untouched, and all of this blown over like an ill dream. But I am afraid I do not find that at all likely. We must be prepared for anything, and go carefully. It may even be we will find the city under martial law."

"Your kin are there to speak for you both among the magistrates, if we find the gates locked against us," Esca says. "It seems to me that your Uncle Aquila's house is in a good way for defense, if we find the worst has happened."

"There are doctors in Calleva too," Cottia says. "Your Roman doctors with their knives and their books; it may be that they can cure those who are taken ill, that they can bring their minds back." Marcus thinks again of Lucilla, her sweet cherub's face twisted into something horrific and inhuman, teeth snapping at his hand, and shudders. He does not think any doctor in his right mind would try his luck.

"I do not think that there was anything left in those outside for even a skilled doctor to bring back," Esca says. "Their souls were gone and their bodies rotting, for all that they were walking."

"Perhaps the druids, then," Cottia offers. "Out of the sight of Rome's magistrates, perhaps their old magic will hold some cure."

Neither of them say what Marcus knows they must both have thought, that this is a curse visited on the Roman invaders by their own native gods. But if that were so, why now? Why not when Boudicca had fallen or when Hadrian had built his wall, or for that matter why not when Claudius had sent his legions over at the very first? But it is not for Marcus to know where this affliction springs from or what the cure to it might be, if there is one. It is only for him to see his family safe, and he will do that as best he can. 

"We make an early start tomorrow," he says. "I will take the first watch." He does not follow to see if Cottia and Esca share the bed together, but he can hear the low murmur of their voices for a time, over the crackling of the fire, and tries not to listen. Cub comes to curl up at his feet, and Marcus tries to empty his mind, leaving tomorrow to worry for itself. He is focused so that when Esca, with his hunter's sense of the passage of time, wakes and comes to take his place by the fire, Marcus startles and the muscles of his bad leg twinge in protest at the sudden movement.

"Easy, easy," Esca says, helping him to his feet. "Go to sleep, Marcus." Marcus thinks he feels the lightest brush of lips over his jaw, but it may be nothing more than a waking dream as he limps towards his bed and falls asleep, burying his face in the pillow where the clean, wild scent of Esca's skin mingles with the flowered sweetness of Cottia's hair.


	3. Chapter 3

It is raining the next day, a dull, steady mizzle that masks the dawn. When he wakes, Marcus feels very keenly that he does not know when next he and Cottia will lie together in this bed, feels the loss of his morning routine spent with Esca, hauling water and tending to the animals before breaking their fast.

He makes a final offering before they leave, a sacrifice of the finest cock in the yard, dedicating the rush of hot, bright blood to guarantee their safe journey and swift homecoming.

_Mithras grant that it may be so._

There are more bodies outside the gate, marked through the eyes by Esca's arrows with their neat fletching, a handful of missed shots scattered in the dirt. The ponies shy from the smell of rot and blood, and Cottia holds Melys as Esca dismounts to reclaim his missiles.

"Esca! Why did you not wake me?" Marcus feels a hot tide of anger rising up, that Esca had let him sleep through the fight, that Esca had faced the threat alone.

"There was no cause," Esca says. "It is a hard shot to make in the dark, but the moon was bright enough. I did not leave the house."

"You should still have woken me," Marcus insists.

"It is not on your shoulders to do everything," Esca says, and Marcus hates the gentleness in his voice.

"I did not say that it was, but it is not unreasonable that I should want to know of a threat against my household, and be there to meet it!"

"Enough," Cottia says, cutting off Esca's retort. "That is enough, both of you. The matter is done, and there is no time for your squabbling."

It is three days ride to Calleva, cutting cross-country on the little winding track over the hill to join the Roman road. They leave the bodies where they have fallen and ride on. The thin drizzle keeps up most of the day, doing no favours to their tempers already frayed by anxiety and sorrow. Where they meet with the road that afternoon, they cross a bedraggled group of foot travellers, who say only that they are on their way south to Regnorum and steadfastly ignore Marcus' attempts to coax more information out of them, plodding on their way until they are out of sight.

"It might be nothing to do with what happened to Lucius," Cottia says. "Anyone may fall on hard times."

There is an itch between Marcus' shoulder blades all the rest of that day, but as tight-wound as they have all been these last days, he pays it scarce any heed. They do not encounter anyone else. 

They make camp there on the side of the road as the evening is drawing in, though they do not light a fire. The weather has cleared, and the sunset is a wash of purple and red, beautiful above the familiar rolling hills. Marcus' heart lifts a little at the sight, the itch between his shoulders easing, and he thinks that the lines on Cottia and Esca's faces are etched a little less deeply. Even the ponies seem more at their ease.

"Is your leg well?" Cottia asks as they eat, seeing Marcus' fingers stray to the muscles of his thigh, tight from hours of riding.

"Well enough," Marcus says. Esca has sometimes, after long days of working the fields, taken it upon himself to massage the ache away, as he had done while still a body slave, but never when Cottia was there to see. Marcus is _not_ going to strip out of his braccae here on the common roadway and let Esca put his hands on him, under the open sky and his wife's sight.

Cottia sniffs, but does not press him further as they prepare for sleep. With the sunset, a chill mist has come up, and she shivers, even wrapped up in her cloak and several blankets against the cold ground.

"Are you sure you spent your childhood in a roundhouse of the Iceni?" Esca teases, passing her one of his blankets.

Marcus half-expects her to bristle at him and snap back, but she only laughs. "Of course! A roundhouse shared with a brother and a pack of hounds. There was no space to be cold!"

"To be sure. Well then, share your blankets with Marcus, who shivered his way back down from Caledonia though it was scarce two months past high summer. Perhaps together you will not spend the whole night chattering your teeth."

Marcus pretends to scowl at him, but his heart is glad of the moment of levity. It passes quickly though, as the mist thickens and the animals shift restlessly. Cub's ears flicker back and forth, and once or twice he comes half to his feet, but he does not give the alarm. Cottia, curled up against Marcus' chest, fidgets and squirms, until he catches her hands in his.

In open country like this, it is hard to surrender to sleep, even with Esca's protective attention at their backs and Cub's keen senses trained for any hint of danger. Marcus sets himself to relaxing, muscle by muscle, so that Cottia will not be kept awake by the tension simmering through him, using the old soldier's trick of making each breath a little longer and slower than the last to help himself fall asleep.

He dreams, for the first time since Lucius' death, restless, foggy dreams, wandering through the empty streets of Calleva, whistling for Cottia, as though they were back in his uncle's garden. Before he can find her, Esca is there, but he has no face. Marcus jerks awake, his breath harsh in his throat.

Cottia makes a sleepy, questioning noise, and Marcus hushes her. "I am only going to relieve Esca on watch," he says.

"It has not been more than two hours," Esca says, as Marcus extricates himself from the tangle of blankets.

"I cannot sleep," Marcus says. "There is no reason for us both to lie awake. I will wake you, if I grow tired."

The prickling between his shoulders is back, all the worse for his dream. Cub is awake, his eye gleaming in the dark, and Marcus finds his ears straining against the rustle of each gust of wind. He wishes fervently that they had decided to risk a fire. Except for the stars wheeling overhead, he would think that time had somehow frozen, dooming him to endure this creeping sense of terror for eternity, with Cottia and Esca lost to him in endless sleep. When Cub breaks the silence with a low growl, it comes almost as a relief.

At first, Marcus thinks that it is the group they passed earlier, changing their course for some unforeseen reason, for they are coming up the road away from Regnorum. But there are fewer than there had been.

Esca's bow is at the ready almost as soon as Marcus wakes him, but he hesitates, looking to Marcus. "I cannot tell if they are like the others, not from here in the dark." It seems to Marcus an unutterably bad idea to try to hail them, for fear of what else might be listening, but he is reluctant to risk murder without great need.

"I see only four, perhaps five of them," he says. "Let them approach; I believe we can handle those odds, if we must." Cub is hackling and threatening, as Marcus has only ever seen him do when confronted by these creatures, but it may be that the wolf is as subject to the strain as any of them, and being more on edge might be wary of any stranger approaching.

"Cottia, you must stay well back, so that Esca and I may move freely if it is to be a fight." Cottia nods, her mouth a grim, set line. Marcus wonders if there are words he should say, but there is no time, the group is very close now. Esca looses a warning shot over their heads, and meets with no response. They are not close enough in the dark to make out their faces, and their gaits are even smoother than Lucius' had been, only the subtlest sense of _wrongness_ about their movements.

With a gesture, Marcus signals Esca to begin taking them down. In the dark, his arrows do not always meet their mark, and sometimes even those that do are not enough to do more than make the creatures stumble, but by the time they have come in range of Marcus' gladius there are only three left standing, their empty faces tracking Marcus' quick, living movements with the barest delay.

One of them, smarter perhaps than the rest, circles wide while Marcus and Esca are dispatching his fellows, making towards where Cottia stands, her fists clenched around her upraised dagger. Her eyes are wide and terrified, but she stands tall, taking careful, measured steps back to keep the distance between them.

Marcus and Cub start for the threat as one, with Esca quick behind. The creature does not ever break walking pace, and Cub takes him down with a flying leap. Teeth snap at his foreleg, but do not connect, and he is up and away by the time Marcus' gladius crunches against the thing's neck bones.

"You must teach me how to fight," Cottia says, her voice raw. "This will happen again, and I will not stand by."

It is one thing that she should carry her dagger, in case the worst should happen, but it is something quite different for her to go charging into battle. Marcus cannot help but bristle a little at the implication that he is not man or Roman enough to keep his wife safe and do his duty by her.

"Cottia, that is not--"

Esca has gone to retrieve his arrows and make sure that those who have fallen will stay down, but he leaves off and turns back to interrupt Marcus.

"We are not in Rome, my friend, and surely when the dead rise up and walk, it is not a slight to your honour that every able hand is needed to wield a weapon."

Cottia makes a little noise of outrage. "Your Roman pride would be offended if I fought by your side? Well, the daughters of the Iceni have their own pride, and I will not sit by when I can fight, your pride be damned! I _will_ learn, Marcus."

Esca is looking at her with open approval, and Marcus knows himself out-numbered. If he is honest, he can see the sense in such a plan, though he still does not like it. But it is not as though Cottia has ever pretended to be an obedient or submissive wife, and he has never expected it of her.

"We will discuss it. But later. It is in my mind that we should be well away from here, lest more of them should be drawn to the commotion." 

They ride briskly until the dawn, when they stop to break their fast, and Marcus snatches what sleep he can. When he wakes, Esca is teaching Cottia to shoot, standing close behind her to correct her grip on the bow. She struggles to draw back the string, her arm trembling against the strain when she finally manages.

Her shot goes far wild, but she grins up at Esca anyway, and he squeezes her shoulder, offering a soft word of praise for her effort. It is all innocent enough, but Marcus' mind flashes back to their heads nestled together on the pillow while he stood watch, and something hot and wanting twists through him. It has been always nice enough with Cottia, though not what he would call passionate, exactly, not like the heady, biting kisses and desperate rutting he had shared with Esca before his marriage. That is the way he feels now, aching for something he does not quite know how to frame, even to himself.

He squeezes his eyes shut, willing his traitorous body and mind to subside. There is certainly no time for such thoughts now, leaving aside the utter inappropriateness of them. Of course he cares deeply for them both, and he is very tired and under an enormous amount of strain. That is all there is to it. Marcus takes another moment to get himself under control, and then goes to join Cottia and Esca.

They pass the scenes of several skirmishes as they ride, some marked only by the disturbed ground or scattered items, but most with more gruesome evidence: bodies, always with their heads severed or beaten in; limbs, severed and left to rot; blood-stains on the stones of the road. It makes Marcus' skin crawl, and the ponies are always eager to skirt wide around the aftermath and push on. Cottia takes to looking away, and Esca always murmurs a prayer for the spirits of those violent dead. For Marcus' part, he finds the horror cuts less and less deeply, and he is mostly just glad that these are not their fights to wage.

Otherwise, the journey passes quietly, with little said between them, until midmorning of the third day, when a tell-tale cloud of dust goes up on the horizon. Faintly, Marcus can hear the _tramp tramp tramp_ of _caligati_ , a sound as familiar as his own heartbeat. Esca's head goes up in alarm, and Cub's hackles rise, but Marcus raises his hand to calm them.

"Peace," he says. "It will be a cohort marching down from the transit camp." The sound is too measured and purposeful to be anything else, and it is not something that Marcus could ever mistake.

They must give way to the marching troops, but Marcus turns Clara alongside, trying for an opportunity to strike up a moment's conversation. More than one of the men make the sign against the evil eye in their direction and all refuse to meet his gaze. Very often, too, they glance back towards Calleva, murmuring amongst themselves. It makes Marcus shiver.

The great marching column has almost passed them by when someone finally looks up, a very young soldier, with lines of exhaustion on his face beneath the dirt from the road. He tries to pretend he has not seen Marcus, but it is too late. 

"Here now, friend," Marcus says. "I only want to hear what news there is from Calleva Atrebatum."

"If it is your thought to go there, best you turn back now," mutters the soldier sullenly. "We've orders to fall back to Regnorum, in an effort to hold the coastal cities against this scourge."

"Are there none left alive in Calleva?" Marcus asks.

The legionary shrugs. "Some, but if they are wise they will flee after the legions before long, much good may it do them. Take my word, better to go back to Regnorum and take the first ship you can book back to the continent. This province is accursed." He puts his head back down, then, and Marcus knows he will get no more from him.

"As bad as that," Marcus murmurs, urging Clara past the end of the column. It is worse than he had been expecting, far worse. He thinks of the farm, and feels a sudden urge to turn back towards home. They had been safe enough there. But there is no knowing how long that will last, if things are so bad in Calleva, and he cannot bring himself to abandon his uncle so callously. 

It is that that makes him say, "I am still inclined to stick with our original plan. It may be that Uncle Aquila and Kaeso are among those who stayed."

"If the weather holds good, we shall be there before dark," Esca says. "Accursed or no, it will be a long time before I am ready to turn tail for Rome." Cottia nods in agreement, already turning her face north, eager to be on the way.

As the day draws on, it is Cottia who first sees what it is that had the troops looking back.

"Look there," she says, pointing, her voice pitched low. At first, the ragged mass of people might be mistaken for camp followers. But they are not. Not so newly afflicted as Lucius and the band on the road had been, their movements are clumsy and slow, their formation held only by their unwavering attention on the marching soldiers, though they are now gone out of sight or hearing. There are far, far more of them than Esca can pick off with his bow, or than Marcus can bring down in close combat.

Marcus' stomach goes cold and tight with a shameful fear, but he breathes deep and forces himself to be calm. "Esca, you and I know the country around here well enough. If it is the legion they are after, they surely will not notice our small party cutting away from the road to go around, and come at Calleva from the east, doubling back to come in over the old earthworks behind them."

Esca nods, and kicks his pony along to lead the way. It is rougher going than the road, and the ponies are tired, but Esca takes them well out of their way, to be sure of going unnoticed. Several times, the terrain requires that they walk the ponies, and by the time they have come out of the forest, within hailing distance of the earthworks, Cottia is stumbling and clinging to her pony's saddle to help make her way.

"I will go on ahead, to find a safe path to your Uncle's house," Esca says. "Let the Cub come with me, and I think I shall be safe enough."

It would be sensible to let Esca do his scouting, for he is better suited to that work than Marcus after three days of hard living taking their toll on his bad leg and Cottia is exhausted, but Marcus finds that he cares rather less for what is sensible than he does for keeping the three of them together until they can find somewhere to rest from the grinding strain of the unprotected road. He finds that he cannot bear the thought of losing sight of either of them; a beating panic rises up in his breast at Esca's suggestion, a hundred times worse again than the worry he felt when Esca turned back in the dark to retrieve the eagle.

"Better that you should have someone to watch your back," Marcus says, striving to keep those feelings out of his voice. "Three can go just as safely as one, if we follow your lead."

Cottia brushes away Marcus' attempt to help her mount again. They find little enough trouble on open stretch from the woods to the shelter of the earthworks, only encountering one of the afflicted, who looks as though she were doddering and infirm before ever falling ill and being left behind by her fellows. She makes a desperate lunge at Esca, only to have the blade of his sword driven half through her skull. 

It is the best confirmation they have had that these creatures are indeed the dead risen up to walk again, hungering for the taste of human flesh; the smell of rancid meat is almost unbearable and there are maggots twisting in the ruined flesh of her remaining eyesocket. Marcus keeps from retching with difficulty.

There are three more to be dispatched before they come to the gap in the earthworks that will let them ride up through Uncle Aquila's garden, where the hedge dividing his land from Kaeso's stands. At first, it looks very like it had when they left, the wild fruit trees and marble benches standing as still and solemn as ever, with the autumn's little apples and damsons ripening on their boughs.

But as they draw nearer, Marcus sees that there is a tumbled heap of bodies sprawled there before the courtyard's sturdy gate. The low drone of thousands of flies reaches them at the same time as the stench, and the garden seems suddenly foreign and unwelcoming, and not at all like the place where the three of them had spent so many happy hours. Cottia makes a noise of disgust. 

"There has been someone here defending the place, at least for some time," Marcus says, in a desperate attempt at optimism. "Let us tend to the ponies and see if we may gain access to the house." 

The forecourt is clean when they have made their careful way inside, but there is an identical pile of bodies outside the street-facing gate. Movement at one of the watchtower windows catches Marcus' eye, and he lifts an arm in greeting. " _Salve_! Is that you, Uncle?"

The figure in the window waves back and holds up a hand for silence, before turning to address someone inside his study. Marcus exchanges a bemused look with Esca; wondering what it is they should expect when someone finally comes to admit them. To his surprise, it is Rufrius Galarius who appears at the door, cracking it open the tiniest sliver, so that Marcus only recognises him from a glimpse his heavy jowl and the tight curls of his hair.

"My friend, will you not open the door? We have had a somewhat--trying time of it, these last days."

"To be sure, my boy," Galarius says gently. "I understand a little of what you have suffered, and that is why I must be cautious. Is there a wound on any of you, a bite or a scratch from one of these unholy spectres?"

"No," Marcus says, wondering why in the name of the Furies it can possibly matter. Certainly he and Esca have suffered worse than scratches in their time, and Cottia has proven herself to be quite hardy. "None, though we have fought our share of them on the road. They are slow and easy enough to dispatch."

"Forgive me for my rudeness," Galarius says, opening the door for them at last. "As you can imagine, these are not the times for carelessness."

"Of course," Marcus murmurs, trying to sort through the myriad questions bubbling to his lips. "Galarius, why would it matter if we had been wounded? You spoke as if you would have turned us away!"

"Indeed I would have," Galarius says, barring the door behind them. "But enough of such talk now; you are road-weary, and there will be time for talking later."

Cottia's eyes are wide and worried in the gloom of the entryway. "Please, sir, do you have news of my family, Kaeso and Valaria that live next door?"

"Fled to Dubris, and bound for the continent, like sensible people," Galarius says. "I believe Aquila has a message from them for you. It was early days when they left," he adds kindly. "I would gladly hazard a wager that they had an easy voyage to Caletum, and are safe in Rome by now."

Procyon does not even bother to get up from his place by the fire to greet them, but his companion, another great brindled wolfhound unfamiliar to Marcus, gives a joyful cry and comes over wagging his tail, sniffing enthusiastically at Cub and butting his head against Esca's hip. 

"Sirius, let them be, you great brute," Galarius says, but he ruffles the hound's ears fondly.

Hearing the commotion, Sassticca comes out from the kitchen and nearly drops the pitcher of water she is carrying.

"Young master! It gladdens me to see you--all of you--back with us, and well."

Marcus gives her a tired grin. "It gladdens me too. Where are Marcipor and Stephanos?"

The joyful smile on her face wavers. "Marcipor is well, at work now in the laundry. But Stephanos--he was taken by this sickness some days ago. Master Galarius sent him peacefully on his way, thank all the gods."

"The grief is on me to hear that," Marcus says, in British. He has heard her singing half-remembered songs in that tongue, and hopes that it may be a kindness for her to hear it spoken.

From the watchtower, Uncle Aquila calls, "Marcus! Is everything well?"

Marcus swallows down the other questions that he is yearning to ask, and turns to mount the stairs, calling back, "Yes, Uncle. Do not trouble yourself to come down, we are on our way up." Esca and Cottia are close behind him, leaving Rufrius Galarius to bring up the rear.

Uncle Aquila looks frailer than Marcus had ever imagined he could, his eyes sunken and the skin hanging loosely on his huge frame, but he crosses the room and clasps Marcus' hands as firmly as ever.

"It is good to see you safe, nephew," he says, and pats Marcus' hand before turning to clasp Esca's forearm. "Doubtless that is in no small part to your efforts. And Cottia!" He embraces her fondly. "You have had hard marching of late, my dear, but I do not doubt that you have handled it with aplomb."

"She has," Marcus says, feeling his heart swell a little with pride for her. "She has not flinched or complained once, through everything."

"It must have taken a great deal of courage from all three of you to come this far," Rufrius Galarius says. "I have seen many people bend and break under the strain of recent events."

"Wash off some of the dust from the road and eat some food, first," Uncle Aquila says, cutting off Marcus' questions again. "You all deserve a moment's respite."

So the three of them troop back downstairs to wash their faces and hands in the bucket set by the kitchen garden, and Cottia combs out and rebraids her hair. Marcus longs for a proper hot bath, but it feels good simply to be in fresh clothes. He supposes that it will be a long time before a trip to the bathhouse for a proper soak will be feasible.

"Are you all right?" he asks Cottia. She nods, and turns away to see her reflection in the still water as she pins up her hair anew. Marcus opens his mouth to reassure her that it is understandable if she is not at all fine, but Esca catches his eye and gives the faintest shake of his head, and so Marcus leaves her to her silence.

Sassticca has brought out dinner by the time they return. It looks quite like a feast to Marcus' eyes, after months of simple farmer's fare and three days' travel. But where Sassticca can usually be counted on to cram them with food until they are bursting, and then try to finish them off with an opulent dessert, tonight there is enough food laid for the five of them, and no more.

"I am sorry to offer you such a stark spread," Uncle Aquila says. "As you can imagine, the import of goods has rather stagnated."

"It is more than enough for us," Cottia says firmly. "Thank you, Uncle Aquila."

It is a quick and quiet meal, for there is no small talk to be had, and Marcus is holding his questions until Uncle Aquila gives him leave to ask them. Cottia, though, has no such scruples.

"Galarius says that my aunt and uncle left word with you before their departure," she says. "May I hear the message?"

"It is a letter that they left, on the desk in my study," Uncle Aquila answers, gesturing to Marcus to fetch it. "I have not broken the seal."

"Thank you," Cottia says. When Marcus brings back the scroll, a little surprised at how thick it seems, Cottia rises to read the message under the fading scraps of daylight streaming through the western window. At first, Marcus watches her, but it occurs to him that there can be nothing but grief for her in whatever is written there, and that the least she deserves is to have a moment to herself. She lets the scroll spring back upon itself, her breath catching on a stifled sob.

"There will be time for talking tomorrow," Uncle Aquila says. "I believe it is time I retired." Rufrius Galarius follows his cue.

"Cottia--" Marcus says helplessly, and opens his arms to her.

Esca takes a step towards the door, to give them privacy, but Cottia says, "Please stay," in a small, frightened voice that does not sound at all like her usual self, and Esca gives her a stricken look. But he stays.

The light is all but gone when Cottia sighs against Marcus' shoulder and wipes her eyes.

"I wish I had seen them again."

"Perhaps, someday, we will make our way to the continent and find them there," Marcus says. It is possible. He feels useless and exhausted and wants only to lie down and sleep until this is over and they can go back home.

As though reading his thoughts, Esca says, "I will go find Marcipor to make sure that everything is in readiness." He brushes his fingers over Cottia's hand as he passes by, a tiny gesture of comfort.

"Master Aquila does not set a guard," the slave says. "The wolfhounds will alert to any disturbance."

It makes Marcus uneasy, especially when Esca goes to the guest cell that had been his after their return from Caledonia, but Uncle Aquila's house is built to withstand an onslaught and Cub has not let them down yet in his guard, so Marcus does not make a fuss.

Cottia is already in the bed, heavy-eyed with exhaustion and sorrow. Marcus pinches out the lamp and goes to her, wrapping her in his arms as though he can shield her from all danger and grief.

It is still very early morning when Marcus creeps out of bed, casting about aimlessly for something to distract himself until the rest of the household wakes. He can hear Sassticca in the kitchen, rousing up Marcipor to start the day's work, and feels another little pang of loss for _home_ and days that started with Cottia baking bread at the hearth and Esca's cheerful whistling as they go about their morning chores. The company of slaves, who will worry at him and be distracted from their tasks is not what he is after, and so he avoids the kitchen and goes out to the stable, thinking that at least the animals will not have expectations of him.

But when he arrives, he finds that he is not the only one who has had that thought, for Esca is there ahead of him, murmuring to his mare as he grooms her. She watches him with her large brown eyes, her ears flickering as though she is listening intently to his conversation.

"You do not have to go," Esca says quietly, when Marcus turns to leave him to his solitude. "Melys and I are not sharing any great secrets."

Melys whiffles at Marcus' hair and at the folds of his tunic, hoping for a treat. "There's nothing but hay for you today, I'm afraid," Marcus tells her, stroking her velvet nose.

Clara stretches over her stall door and nudges at Marcus' shoulder, blowing through her lips in a disgruntled sort of way.

"Are you jealous, bold and beautiful?" Marcus asks, turning to give her his attention. She rests her muzzle possessively over his shoulder, and Marcus smiles, imagining her giving Melys a smug look at having won him away. "But you see, I have no treat for you either." It seems that is all the use Clara has for Marcus, for she nudges him away after that and goes back to the haybale.

"When we go in, I will ask your uncle if it is safe to let them graze in the garden," Esca says. "She will like the spoils from the crabapple tree."

They lapse into a comfortable silence, a little of the weight that has ridden so heavily on them easing. Esca leans against the wall by Marcus, close enough that Marcus can feel the warmth of him through their tunics, but not quite touching. It has been so long since they touched, really touched, even before their lives had become a waking nightmare.

Esca shifts, just a little, so that his shoulder presses up against Marcus' and their fingers brush together, an unspoken question. And as much as he wants to give in, Marcus...cannot. He cannot. Not with Cottia inside, asleep in his bed, and his world crumpled down around him, holding onto everything that makes him Roman with both hands against the encroaching darkness. If he gives an inch now, he will fall apart.

He pulls away. "It will be time for breakfast soon," he says, and does not wait for Esca to answer. Beating a tactical retreat is the lesser weakness here.

It is a sorry little group that gathers in the triclinium that morning to break their fast. There are bruise-dark shadows under Cottia's eyes, and Esca and Rufrius Galarius' cheeks are rough with stubble. Marcus is sure he looks no better. Only Uncle Aquila, immaculately dressed and clean-shaven, looks presentable. He seems more like himself today, not some frail old man, and it gladdens Marcus' heart.

"I suppose your questions have been put off long enough," Uncle Aquila says, as Marcus picks at his bread. "Go on then, and Galarius and I will inform you as best we can."

"Thank you, Uncle." Marcus scarcely knows where to begin. "How long has this been going on?"

"Less than a month that it came to Durinum," Galarius says. "But elsewhere, I do not know." He shrugs his great shoulders. "It spreads very quietly; it may be that we are only now coming to hear of it."

"You think it a natural sickness, then, and not that they have been cursed or possessed?" Marcus asks.

"I do not know what to think," Galarius says. "I have seen men bewitched before, and it was never like this. But then I have never seen men rise up and walk after sickening and dying of a fever either. The gods alone know."

"So there is no cure, no help for them?" Cottia asks. Marcus shoots her a quelling look, but she ignores him.

"None that I have seen, not priests' rituals or doctors' medicine. No, the only thing to do is to kill them before they spread their affliction further, whatever the nature of it."

"You would not let us in if we were scratched," Marcus recalls. "Is that why, that it might have spread to us?"

Galarius nods. "Every man I have seen marked succumbs. It takes only a matter of days--sometimes not even that--for the fever to rage and burn out all trace of the person he once was."

"Stephanos asked not to suffer that fate," Uncle Aquila says. There is genuine sadness in his voice; Stephanos had been with him for decades. "He said he did not know if his soul would go to his gods if his body were to walk again."

Marcus shudders. He is glad that they did what they could for Lucius' family, and that Esca had taken some care for those bodies on the road. Even if the gods he invoked were other than those they had worshipped, perhaps they had still served to bring them to peace.

"How many are left in Calleva?" Esca asks.

"Perhaps one in five households," Galarius hazards. "When the Eagles pulled back, they took the people's courage with them."

"The Eagles have given up the interior of the province for lost, we heard so on the road." Marcus swallows. "But they will hold the coastal cities.

"So it seems," Uncle Aquila says. "There is little word passing north anymore; indeed, Galarius was one of the few men to ride into Calleva, even when the transit camp was still occupied."

"There was little keeping me in Durinum," Galarius says, with the tone of a man saying all that he has to say on a matter.

For the first time, Marcus wonders what Galarius had left behind in Durinum, if there had been a woman or children, friends, lost to this scourge, so that Uncle Aquila had been his nearest concern. But it is not for him to ask.

They sit in silence for a time, absorbing everything that has been said. It is overwhelming, somehow, to be discussing these matters in Uncle Aquila's well-appointed dining room. Marcus wonders if he will ever get used to it.

"So what will you do now?" Uncle Aquila asks. "You are welcome to stay here as long as you see fit."

"We cannot stay on and deplete your stores," Marcus says, appalled. "We will--" He looks at Esca, for he has absolutely no idea what it is they will do. Beside him, Cottia stiffens, staring down at her plate.

"You will stay, until you have come up with a better plan," Uncle Aquila insists. "You are young and spry, I have no doubt that you can come up with some way to earn your keep. If nothing else, young Esca is, I believe, a steady hand with that bow of his. He will be an asset to this house's defenses."

Esca inclines his head in acknowledgement, and so the matter is settled. In lieu of a better plan, they will stay.


	4. Chapter 4

In many ways, their present circumstances are an improvement over the farm. Besides being more comfortably appointed and spacious, Uncle Aquila's villa had been designed for just such a scenario as this. It would take a great deal more concentrated effort than these spectres seem to be capable of mustering to bring down the gates.

Usually, there are a handful of the spectres that come wandering up to one of the gates each day. They seem drawn particularly to noise, at first, and then they school like fish, more and more of them heaping up as the message spreads. It is Uncle Aquila's policy to dispatch them immediately, to keep that from happening. So far, they have been lucky, never more than ten of the creatures amassing at one time.

Marcus chafes at the cowardly nature of fighting from behind the safety of the iron gate.

"There is no honour in fighting this way," he says.

"No," Esca agrees. "But neither is there anything to gain by fighting them in the open. There cannot be much honour in defeating a foe already dead."

Marcus gives a non-committal shrug, wrinkling his nose at the rotting jumble of bodies.

"It will be a miracle if none of us take ill from the bad air let off by their rotting," he says, but there is nothing they can do.

"It will be better come the winter," says Esca.

That is true enough, and Marcus would wish for its swift coming, if only there were more food. But even so, they are not too badly off. There are chickens in the stable yard, good layers, and Sassticca's kitchen garden. Cottia has brought her own gardening supplies, and in quick order starts a little plot of her own, with winter vegetables. The wild fruit trees in the shelter of the earthwork give an abundant harvest.

One of the first tasks Cottia sets for herself and the slaves is to gather in the apples, pears, and damsons growing.

"We need to eat," she says, when Marcus learns of her plan and protests that he should go in her stead. "You cannot climb the trees, that is no good. There are many trees, all three of us are needed."

"What is Esca doing, then?"

"Keeping watch with his bow to make sure that we have time to retreat if there are too many. You could join him," she says with a sharp little smile.

Marcus still mislikes the idea, but if Esca has already fallen in with it, then to protest is as futile as trying to turn the tide. And they do need the food.

Cottia hates being cooped up inside, especially after her months of freedom as the farm's sole mistress, and her joy at being free of the straight walls again practically shines off of her, despite the danger. She kilts her skirts up high, careless of Esca and anyone else that might see and scrambles nimbly up the nearest tree. Sassticca and Marcipor, too old to be climbing trees, catch the harvest she rains down and gather up the worst of the bruised windfalls to save for the ponies. 

Esca has climbed to the top of the gate, a vantage point that will show him the whole garden, all the way down to the earthworks. The sun glints in his hair, and he looks fierce and otherworldly, lounging at the top of the courtyard wall with his bow, keeping careful watch over them. It takes a great deal of effort on Marcus' part not to stare, keeping his attention resolutely on the task at hand.

Up in the tree, Cottia looks like some kind of woodsprite, her hair coming down from its neat couronne, grinning as she works. Between the two of them, and the bright autumn sunshine, Marcus' heart feels full and happy almost to aching. He does not forget for a single moment that he might be called to draw his sword, but that awareness seems far enough away that it does not keep him from enjoying the day and the simple, mindless labour as he helps load the baskets.

The afternoon is drawing in, and Esca gives the low, lilting whistle that is their signal to come home, the long, evening-tinged shadows too likely to hide a threat from him until it is too late. It has been a quiet, uneventful day, but there is that coldness again between Marcus' shoulders as Cottia slips down from the tree and shoulders her basket.

She smiles at him, and he reaches out to tuck a stray curl back out of her face. Cub comes yowling over the earthwork--he has had to run down most of his own food of late, out of necessity--skidding to a stop before Marcus and Cottia, baring his teeth.

"Inside, now," Marcus snaps to the slaves and Cottia, drawing his sword. In the same instant, Esca gives the signal that means Marcus must fall back with them, outnumbered. They come pushing through the hedge, easily numbering a dozen, ambling inexorably towards the house, at an angle that will cut them off from the gate if they are not swift. The ground is too uneven for Marcus to face them as he falls back, his treacherous leg threatening to send him toppling. An arrow sings overhead, felling the nearest spectre, and those immediately behind stumble over their fallen comrade. It makes just enough time for Cottia and the slaves to dart around the lumbering column and break for the courtyard gate, with Marcus just behind, cut off by the ones who have swerved around the pile up.

Esca, his bow abandoned, circles around the melee, dispatching one of the grinning spectres coming in on Marcus' flank, and takes up his position at Marcus' shield-shoulder, cutting down a swathe for them to make it back through the gate. Marcus slams the latch shut at the last moment, snatching his hands back from the snapping teeth, and staggers back. Esca's hand catches the back of his tunic and slows his fall.

Cottia sinks down to her knees beside him, her breath panting harshly in her throat. She seizes Marcus' bloody hands in hers, turning them over and over, searching for wounds, checking along the entire length of his arms, and giving a sigh of relief when she finds him whole and well. Esca's hands are covered in gore, and she immediately passes him her mantle to wipe them clean.

"Let me look, Esca," Marcus says, praying to find him unhurt. Cottia's sky-blue mantle is ruined, streaked end to end with dark filth, but she tosses it aside carelessly when Esca hands it back to her. He kneels for Marcus to run his hands along the tapered lengths of his fingers and the fine bones of his wrist, up to the vulnerable hollows of his elbows, and finally to where the blue ink curls over his shoulders.

This is a gory rend in his tunic, on the back side of his shoulder, but when Marcus pushes the sleeve up, his skin underneath is pink and whole. At that, Marcus feels every muscle in his body go weak, his fingers tracing compulsively over the slightly raised mark of the tattoo. He feels like he might be sick.

"Brother, your god of the shining spear was smiling on you today."

Esca, too, is shaken, though he hides it better. He raises his hand to cover Marcus' own, squeezing tight, and they stay there for a long moment, with Cottia pressed close against Marcus' side, until he can breathe again.

" _Domina_ , should I go to find Rufrius Galarius?" Marcipor asks, sounding thready and subdued.

"Yes," Cottia says, rising to her feet. "Bring him, and if you can find Uncle Aquila too, let him know what is afoot."

Marcus had forgotten the ravening spectres at the gate. Every moment that passes is a moment that they draw more of them down, bringing them closer and closer to the day that they are trapped inside the villa, with no escape. He presses his forehead against Esca's for a heartbeat, and then stands to finish the work.

Already there are more of them, and he tries to focus only on the blade of his gladius as it thrusts in between the bars of the gate, aiming for their eyes to get the easiest kill. Esca joins him after a moment, until there are none left to stumble over their fallen comrades and fill the ranks. They ought to clear the bodies back from the gate, but it is murky twilight by now, and Marcus wants only to rest.

"Marcus, lad, are you well?" Rufrius Galarius' voice seems to come from very far away, but Marcus shakes his head a little to clear it, and the blue-jowled face comes into clearer focus, frowning down at him. "No one was hurt?"

"None," Marcus says, holding up his hands as though to show the proof of it. He looks around for Esca, instinctively, and feels his insides freeze up with panic when he cannot see him.

"Esca is gone to wash up in the kitchen garden," Cottia says, looking up at Galarius, though it is obvious from her gentle tone that the words are meant for Marcus. "He was knocked about, but not wounded."

Marcus knows that he should be ashamed that his irrational fear was so obvious to her, but even with the knife edge of panic gone, he is still uneasy with Esca out of his sight, and he can spare only half of his attention for debriefing Galarius.

"Praise Jupiter that all of you are well," the old camp surgeon says, clapping Marcus on the shoulder. "Go on and do your own washing up; I will inform your Uncle, if he does not know already."

Marcus' legs feel unsteady as a newborn colt's on his way to the kitchen garden.

"Are you all right?" he asks Cottia. She is very pale under her bright hair, and her fingers are streaked with blood from his and Esca's hands.

"Yes," she says, her chin goes up a little. "I am going to go help Sassticca to bring in the baskets."

"I will help you," Marcus says, but Cottia shakes her head.

"You're filthy. Go wash up and rest. We will manage," she says, and Marcus is grateful for the brusque tone of her voice. He could not bear her open kindness right now. In the garden, he spends a long time scrubbing the blood and filth from his hands, until they are raw and red.

Esca is in Marcus' room when he finally makes his way along the colonnade, with the lamp flickering invitingly and a fresh tunic laid out on the bed.

"That is not for you to do," Marcus says without much force, as Esca passes him the new tunic and kneels down to unlace his sandals. Esca ignores him.

"Are you hungry?" Esca asks.

Marcus shakes his head, holding up a hand for Esca to see how it is still shaking. "I'd only sick it up." 

Esca half-laughs. "The same with me." He looks at Marcus out of the corner of his eye, his body turned half towards the door.

"You must not do that again," Marcus says, while he still has the chance. "I could not bear it if you had been lost today."

"So I should have left you to be lost instead, and Cottia to be widowed?" Esca says. "I will not see another brother fallen in battle, Marcus, and you should not dishonour me by suggesting that I could ever stand by like a coward and see you harmed."

Marcus knows he has the right of it, but even thinking of such a thing makes him shudder with misery, his heart beating faster. The events of today will haunt his dreams.

"Esca, you must understand--"

"No," Esca says, and kisses him. And Marcus, with his mind playing over and over that horrible moment before his fingers smoothed over Esca's skin, kisses back. Esca makes a needy little noise that sings through Marcus' heart and presses closer, his hands fisting in Marcus' tunic.

"Cottia," Marcus says. "Esca, this is nothing for her to walk in on."

"She will not, for she is not such a fool as you," Esca says, a breath of amusement in his words. "She sent me to take care of you." Marcus has no time to think about that, for Esca is working his hand down between them, pushing Marcus' braccae down to wrap his fingers around him.

This fierce coupling, all sharp-edged teeth and panted obscenities, is not what Marcus would normally have thought of as care-taking. It feels more like fighting. But Esca's fist strips his cock roughly, perfect, and there is a strange kind of tenderness to it after all, in the way he is pressed against Marcus in a hot line from thigh to shoulder, his teeth scraping against Marcus' jaw.

"Let me," Marcus whispers, his voice splintering over the words as he pushes his hand down Esca's belly and beneath his braccae. "Let me touch you, Esca."

"Yes," Esca says against Marcus' skin, "yes--Marcus, ah!--of course," and he rocks into Marcus' grip, his hand faltering a little on Marcus' cock as they find a new rhythm together.

Marcus cannot look away as pleasure flickers over Esca's face, cannot help panting Esca's name on ragged breaths as his orgasm begins to unfurl in his belly, and Esca leans in to quiet him with a kiss, sweet now, no teeth.

"Shh, Marcus. Quietly now, come on," and Marcus bites his lip to keep from crying out when he pulses over Esca's fist. Esca whimpers at the jerky, too-tight grip of Marcus' hand on him, sharp little breaths panting out against Marcus' neck.

"S-sorry," Marcus says, easing up, smoothing his palm over Esca's cock, pressing it up against Esca's belly and leaving a smear of pre-come across his skin. Esca tilts his head back, his frantic, hungry energy bled away now, and Marcus wonders at how beautiful he is, his mouth kissed red and swollen, the copper fall of his hair over Marcus' sun-darkened fingers, caught and held fast in his wanting.

" _Please_ ," Esca mouths soundlessly, and Marcus kisses the shape of his pleas away, torn between his desire to give in to Esca and to hold onto this shining moment, sheltered away from the grinding weariness that has over-shadowed their lives. But of course it cannot last. Esca is silent when he comes, his face pressed hot and damp against Marcus' neck.

Somewhere in the back of Marcus' mind, beneath the murky fog of satiated exhaustion, he is aware that they have opened a door that he has been fighting with all his strength to keep closed. But he has no energy left to be ashamed or anxious; indeed, it seems to take all the strength he has to keep his eyes open.

He kisses the corner of Esca's jaw, making a soft, involuntary noise of contentment.

"We could have this, always, if you were not so stubborn," Esca says. 

"Indulgence is a luxury we--I--cannot afford," Marcus says. He is too tired for this, but Esca will not be put off.

"I did not realise I was only an indulgence." Esca's voice is cold.

"Esca, I did not mean it that way! It is only that--"

But Esca has already gone.

Marcus cleans away the traces of their coupling and lies down, staring blindly up at the ceiling, desperate for sleep but finding it wholly beyond his grasp. After a while, Cottia comes to lie beside him.

"You are the only one who thinks it a weakness to let yourself have what you want when it is freely offered," she murmurs, touching his hand.

"Perhaps, but I do not think that is your concern," Marcus says stiffly, mortified that she should speak of such things, that she had sent Esca to his bed and then come to lie down on the blankets that are still warm from his body. 

"My husband's happiness is not my concern?" Cottia demands. 

"Not in this," Marcus says. Cottia makes a furious noise, and it is more than Marcus can face right now to have this fight. He rolls over and pretends to be asleep.


	5. Chapter 5

Marcus knows that Esca has continued teaching Cottia how to shoot, more or less in secret, whenever there is time to spare, but he has for the most part been ignoring it. They have both been quiet and reserved with him of late, and it seems easier to let them have their space until the air has cleared. Marcus certainly does not want to talk about any of it.

So Cottia has her lessons, and no one says anything against them. Uncle Aquila has made a few grumbling comments beneath his breath, but Marcus has ignored that too and pretended that he has no idea that his wife is anything but the perfect picture of Roman decorum. She will do exactly as she pleases anyway, and Marcus has learned to pick his battles.

But after waking three nights in a row in a cold sweat, in the midst of dreaming about the harrowing events in the garden, Marcus stops ignoring the lessons and begins to attend them himself.

"It is a useful skill to have, in these days," he says with a shrug, when Esca raises an eyebrow at him. Marcus is a fair enough archer, but next to Esca he seems little better than a child. With a bow more suited to her strength, Cottia seems to have a natural gift for it; she will not be bringing down any of the spectres outside of the gate yet, except by luck, but after many long days of practise, it is rare that she misses entirely the target that they have made on the back wall of the stable. Esca is an impatient teacher, quick to correct the position of her hands or to criticise how she is standing, but Cottia grits her teeth and bears it.

Marcus tries to pretend that he does not notice how carelessly they touch, here in the sanctum of these unusual lessons. Esca does not hesitate to put his feet outside of Cottia's, showing her with the line of his own body how to stand. He kneels and repositions her feet, moves her hand along the bow string, pushes her hips back and realigns her shoulders. Marcus has to stop watching and go for his own bow--the same one he and Esca had made together a lifetime ago--sending arrow after arrow plunging into the target and resolutely not thinking about Esca's hands in any circumstances at all.

"You will be more than a match for me soon," Marcus says to Cottia, when they take a moment's rest, only half-teasing. She smiles at him, and Marcus is glad that her anger at him seems to have run its course.

"Already, it may be good to take her on the hunting trail," Esca says. "There will be more of a challenge in that than in these painted circles."

"We must eat," Cottia says, before Marcus can open his mouth. "Marcus, I know at least as much woodcraft as you, I can be useful!" She flings her head up in defiance. "I will not live shut up inside these walls, you cannot expect that of me. And Esca has been teaching me to use a sword too; I am not helpless now!"

"I can see that nothing I say will change your mind," Marcus says. "I do not like it, but so long as you promise to obey any command from me or Esca, without question, I will not try to dissuade you."

"I promise," Cottia says without hesitation. She looks fully prepared to swear any oath that they might require, to kneel as a shield-bearer kneels to pledge service, and Marcus cannot help but be proud of her, in spite of his misgivings.

There is a queer, intense look on Esca's face, one that Marcus does not quite understand, and he ignores the way his heart beats the faster for seeing it. He forces himself to look away.

"It will be time for supper, soon," he says, his voice ringing too loud in his ears.

"We will want to begin planning Cottia's first hunt, as well," Esca says. "Sassticca will be glad for more meat to put on the table."

That evening, after Cottia has gone to their bed, Marcus lingers in the atrium to cross Esca as he goes on the way to his own sleeping-cell. Catching sight of Marcus, Esca hesitates, and Marcus moves toward him, reaching out to put a hand on his shoulder. Esca takes a step back.

"Please," Marcus says, holding up his hands. "Esca, I am sorry. You must know that I think more highly of you than that."

There is still a veil behind Esca's eyes, but when Marcus steps tentatively into his space, he stands very still, waiting, and Marcus kisses him, shy and careful.

"I cannot always be waiting for you to push me away again," Esca says. "Do not do this now unless you mean to see it through."

Marcus kisses him again. "I mean to see it through."

At those words, the last of the barriers Esca has drawn up between them fall away and the corners of his mouth lift in a faint smile. It settles a tiny blossom of warmth beneath Marcus' breastbone, and he begins to hope that perhaps this will not be so hard as he had feared.

The morning of the hunt dawns clear and cold. Soon, as the autumn passes, they will be hard-pressed to find game, and their already lean table will be all but bare. Marcus tries not to think about it. There are the chickens still, and Cottia's winter garden; they will find a way to scrape through.

For the hunting, Cottia has lain aside her _stola_ for a checked cloak, her skirt kilted up over a pair of Esca's old cut-down braccae. Marcus thinks that she must look very like the dark queen of her people, with her head lifted high, the wind tugging loose curls from her braid and blowing them wild around her face. It is not a pleasant thought, but he cannot deny that he finds her fierce pride beautiful. Bricca prances in place, as eager as her rider to be on the hunt.

"May it be a good hunting," Marcus says softly, as they make their way through the mist-wreathed fruit trees in the garden. Cottia rides a little behind and to the right of him, with Esca flanking her, so that none of them will be far from support to fall back on if there is an attack. The further they range from Calleva, the threat is more likely to be a sounder of boars in the rut, which does not make Marcus feel any better about this endeavour. He tries to reassure himself that Cottia is clever and watchful; there will be no harm come to her. But he cannot quiet the gnawing worry reminding him that if she is hurt, it will be on his head.

There is no room on the hunting trail for such preoccupation; he takes a deep breath and pushes those worries aside, focusing on the task at hand. There is a flash of movement across the path ahead, and they are off, with Cub streaking on ahead to turn the deer's flight. Marcus' heart lifts at the chase, riding in perfect coordination with Esca, just like the old days, with Cottia flying along behind them. She is a good rider, quick and nimble, and between them, Esca and Marcus are skilled enough to drive the quarry into the open for Cottia to send an arrow skimming just over its back, before Esca's own spear bites deep, and Cub leaps to drag the animal down.

It is not Esca's way to offer empty praise, but Cottia does not seem to expect anything of the sort, content with the energy of the chase and the wide freedom of the forest. She has helped with the butchering before, with the rabbits in the hutch and the game from the hunt, and she shows no hesitation now at learning how to field-dress the carcass, following Marcus' instructions with painstaking care.

"That was well done," Marcus says, when they have tossed the entrails to Cub and slung their prize across the back of Esca's saddle. Cottia smiles at him, the streak of blood across her cheek where she unwittingly pushed back her hair making her look more than ever like the killer warrior queen.

On the ride home, Cub startles a covey of grouse and Cottia looses a quick volley of arrows, half a heartbeat behind Esca's own action, and brings down a fine greyhen. She swings down from her mount with easy grace to claim her prize and scuffle through the leaves to find her lost arrows.

"You begin to have the makings of a fine archer," Esca tells her, with his slow half-smile, and she beams all across her narrow face, looking down at her pony's mane as though to keep them from seeing.

She is still smiling when they break the cover of the woods, their easy camaraderie instantly turning watchful in the open country under Calleva's earthworks. Their crossing to the garden is quiet, in the way that never fails to make Marcus worry, these days. His worry is not entirely misplaced, for as they round the last of the hedges, they see Rufrius Galarius at the gate, cleaning his gladius, with three collapsed bodies sprawled on the other side.

"Do you hurry inside," he says. "There may be more of them on the move." Marcus thinks of what might have happened if there had been more of them there when they rode up, and offers up a grateful prayer that they have come safely back again.

Cottia helps Sassticca to butcher the roe deer in the farthest corner of the courtyard, and then joins Marcus and Esca over the washing tub in the kitchen garden. They are stripped to the waist, scrubbing quickly to get out of the cold air, and for a moment Marcus half-thinks that Cottia is going to follow suit, but she has brought a basin from the kitchen and goes around to the other side of Sassticca's rosemary bushes, so that they can only see her bright fall of hair and a glimpse of her pale shoulder and back as she washes. Marcus does not let himself check to see if Esca's eyes linger overlong.

Rufrius Galarius' prediction proves true, for no sooner have they sat down to dinner than Cub and Sirius both send up the alarm, as Esca has trained them, not by baying to draw more of the spectres down, but pacing and growling back and forth between their masters and the foyer door.

"Esca and I will see to it," Marcus says, as though the interruption is only an unexpected caller at the gate. Out of deference for Uncle Aquila's mores, Cottia does not carry her bow or the light sword that Esca has found for her when in the house, and she has not ever moved to help with the defense of the gate. Tonight though, perhaps emboldened by her triumphs on the hunting trail, she follows Marcus and Esca into the courtyard, bringing her sword with her.

"Cottia, no," Marcus says. "Esca and I are here, there is no reason for you to put yourself in danger."

"Would you rather I learn without the gate between us?" Cottia retorts. "Show me what to do."

There is not room at the narrow gate for all three of them; Esca falls back, letting Cottia step into his place at Marcus' shoulder. She grits her teeth, thrusting the point of her light sword out and down to pierce her target's skull like a ripe melon. The corpse falls like a bag of sand and it takes all of her strength to wrench back without losing her blade. She makes a disgusted noise, stumbling a few feet away to be sick.

"I did not think it would be so bad, if they were not living men," she gasps, wiping her mouth on her sleeve.

"It is always bad," Esca says, leaning his shoulder gently against hers. "But you carried yourself bravely."

She has watched countless times as Marcus and Esca have cleaned the gore from their swords, and she imitates their movements now with her own, til it is shining in the flickering light of the torch that Marcipor brings out to them. Marcus watches her silently, half of her face lost in deep shadow and blood on her hands, and prays that he will be able to keep her safe.

As the winter sets in, the game is less plentiful and their stores dwindle ever further. The scant meals on their table are plain, and Marcus finds himself dreaming of food, grilled river trout, fresh blackberries and clotted cream, savillum, veal braised with wine and garum.

"There will be food in the abandoned houses," Esca says one evening over dinner. "Grain stores in the kitchens, olives, cheese."

"It may be a worthwhile endeavour," Galarius muses. "Depending on how well the household cats have kept up their work in their masters' absence.'

Marcus mislikes the idea. The state of Calleva's streets are such that their little enclave might well be the only one in the city, for all that they have seen of any other living souls. It has never been worth the risk to venture into the town proper to see how true that might be. But with everyone's belts bearing new holes, he is in no position to speak against the idea.

"I will go," he says. "Together, Cub and I should do well enough." Across the table, Esca's face goes blank. Marcus sees Cottia biting her lip to keep from bursting out with a retort.

Galarius looks from Marcus to Esca and back again, raising his eyebrows. "I think you will find yourself followed, if you try to set out without someone to watch your back. Certainly I am not of any mind to let you go alone."

"I would not be so presumptuous as to try to order you, sir," Marcus says. Cottia is fidgeting beside him, drumming her fingers on the edge of the couch, and he lays his hand over hers to still them.

"You are not going to try to leave me here," she says, as soon as Uncle Aquila and Galarius have retired.

"Cottia, no one is in doubt of your courage, least of all me," Marcus says, trying to make her see sense. "But this will not be like the hunting. Will you not stay where you are safe?"

"If you and Esca return safely, then I will too," Cottia says with simple conviction. "And if you do not, I would rather fall at your side than be kept here in a cage without you."

"It is not as simple as that! I would protect you with my life, but it still might be that we came riding home without you." It is that thought that Marcus cannot bear, that through the caprices of the battlefield he would fail in his duty to her and live where she had not. "But if you stay here, I can promise that you will be safe."

"Unless you do not come home!" There is panic in Cottia's eyes then, and she wrenches away when Marcus tries to put his hands on her shoulders. "Marcus, you could not leave me behind! Why did you help Esca teach me to fight, if not for this, so that I could follow you? If this is because you are too proud to fight beside me--"

"It is because a season's training with a sword does not make you a warrior! Why are you so eager to fling yourself into danger?"

"Because--I cannot stay. I _cannot_. There is nothing here for me, save you and Esca. I think of watching you both ride away, and I cannot breathe, it is like iron bands are squeezing all of the air from my chest." Her eyes flash, suddenly not pleading at all. "And you cannot tell me you do not understand, because I have seen your face when you look round and Esca is not where you expect to find him!"

"I also understand." Esca's voice is quiet, but his eyes are fixed on Marcus with startling intensity.

"Tell me then your thoughts on the matter, Esca," Marcus says. Cottia lifts her chin defiantly.

"It is true that she is not a warrior, but neither is it warriors we will be facing," Esca says. "Among my people, I would say that it should be her choice to make. Calleva is not within Rome's world anymore, Marcus," he adds gently.

"I know it is not," Marcus says, feeling a great, wrenching sense of grief at the admission. "I know." He had hoped that by now the Eagles would have pushed north again to reclaim the rest of Britannia, bringing back with them the ways that have been the only measure he ever knew for mapping out himself.

Marcus stands up from the couch without another word and walks away, ducking into the alcove where the household gods have their altar. There is nothing else to be said on the matter; there is no way to make Cottia see the shape of this as he sees it. If she does not come home, it will be because he did not keep her safe. There can be no mitigating that, no sharing of the responsibility. It seems useless to pray for the outcome when he is so very much at fault, but he does anyway, to Mithras and the _lares_ of Uncle Aquila's house and to any other gods that might listen: _Please, see this safely through. Let her live through this._ Esca would take care of her, if Marcus did not come home. If they are together, they will be all right. _Please, let them be all right._

As though from a great distance, he hears Esca and Cottia's footsteps ringing in the colonnade, on their way to bed, and rises stiffly to join them. Cottia reaches for his hand, carefully, as though afraid he will pull away. Her fingers are cold.

"Esca has the right of it, that this should be your choice to make," Marcus says, for it needs to be said, even though the matter has already been decided. "I will not stop you."

"You would have had to tie me up in the storeroom to keep me here," Cottia says, and Marcus shakes his head, smiling a little despite himself.

"You have still got Uncle Aquila and Galarius to convince," he says. "They are older and tougher than I."

"But you will speak for me?" Cottia asks, squeezing his hand.

"I will," Marcus says.

It comes to him then that he is lost.

The next few days are imbued with a kind of awful clarity, like the breathless moments just before a battle, except that it drags on and on. Strung tight with nerves, Marcus finds himself lost in the pattern of Esca's hands as he sharpens his hunting spears or mesmerised in following the track of a strand of Cottia's hair as it weaves through her braids.

Uncle Aquila, upon finding out about Cottia's intentions, reacts much as Marcus expects, grumbling in disapproval, but without very much heat. "I suppose it is not as though we have any neighbours left to spread gossip," he says, and that is more or less the end of it. Rufrius Galarius, though, is an unknown quantity.

"Aquila tells me that your lady is of a mind to ride into Calleva with us," he says to Marcus during dinner. Cottia's head goes up, like a hind who has scented danger.

"So she is," Marcus says. "I have given my permission."

"I would expect no less from a daughter of the Iceni," Rufrius Galarius says. "Well, I have seen your warrior woman at her sword practice, and I am not fool enough to argue with her. I only hope that you do not have cause to regret your decision, Marcus."

Cottia's cheeks go pink with fury, and Marcus is quick to thank Galarius for his concern and turn the tide of the conversation.

"Be grateful that they both took it as well as they did," Marcus tells her later. "You will have to take your victories where you can find them."

"Thank you for standing with me," Cottia says. "I know that you do not like it."

"There are a great many needful things that I do not like these days," Marcus says.

He had not really noticed it with the surface of his mind, but it has been chafing at him just as much as it has Cottia and Esca to be forever trapped inside, with even the garden an infrequent and dangerous adventure. By the time the morning of their mission is at hand, he is so glad to finally be taking action that he has very little thought to spare for how much he dislikes Cottia's decision to go with them.

They eat their breakfast in near silence, and Rufrius Galarius offers a libation of a few precious drops of wine to the household gods. Marcus makes a private promise to sacrifice the best cockerel in their little roost, if the gods will but send them safely home, apologising in advance that they must keep the best of it to eat.

"Be well," Uncle Aquila says, offering Marcus and Galarius a sharp salute. "Bring yourselves safely home."

The street is deserted when they finally slip out of the gate, and Marcus is not sure whether to take it as an omen for good or ill. Esca had muffled the ponies' hooves with rags, but the jingle of tack and creak of leather still sounds horribly loud on the still air. The first house they have agreed to check is the last but one on the street. It is not a journey of more than a mile, but it feels to Marcus at least an hour before they fetch up against the gate.

It had been agreed during their planning that it is better for the four of them to stay together, though it slows them down, and so they leave the ponies to stand on their own in the empty forecourt. The front door is on the latch, and creaks open when Marcus gives it a light push.

The atrium is empty, save for furniture covered over with dustcloths, waiting for the family to return. A spider has begun spinning its web in the corner of the kitchen doorway, but otherwise the house seems abandoned by all things living and not, left to gather dust in solitude. Marcus feels a moment's shame at prying into this private space, where people that he knew to salute on the street had gone about the quiet business of living their lives. But they will not be coming back, even if they still live, and Marcus would gladly suffer far greater prices if it meant his family might eat.

The storeroom shelves are neat and orderly, well-stocked. Cottia goes carefully over each shelf, selecting jars of quince jam and apples stored in honey, setting aside an amphora of oil and another of olives, a basket of onions. There is grain as well, stored carefully in neat sacks, but the rats have beaten them here.

"We may find ourselves to be less discerning soon," Esca says grimly, letting a little trickle of grain run from the gnawed out corner of one of the sacks. It makes Marcus' skin crawl with revulsion, but he has been hungry long enough to know that it would not take much to outweigh his disgust.

The door leading down to the cellar is locked, and the key nowhere to be found. "Perhaps we will have better luck at the next house," Marcus says.

While Esca and Rufrius Galarius load the spoils onto the ponies, Marcus goes with Cottia to pick through the rest of the house, in search of clothing and other goods.

"I hate this," Cottia says softly, holding up a tunic to see if it has been gotten at by moths. "It feels disgraceful. Their houses should be left in peace."

"I know," Marcus says. "I am sorry for it."

"It is not your fault," Cottia says, folding up the tunic and stowing it in her basket. "We must live."

They find a child's toys scattered about the floor of the next room, and Cottia flinches back. Marcus hopes that the little one had been able to take at least one of his toy soldiers with him when his family had fled, to keep him company on the journey. He squeezes Cottia's hand as they make their way back to join the others.

They are just in time, for no sooner has Marcus swung up into his saddle than Cub flattens his ears back against his head, growling deep in his throat, looking back the way that they came. The quiet morning appears to be at an end.

"We can make the next road," Marcus says. "Quickly, through the garden here, and ride towards the North gate." He brings up the rear, glancing often over his shoulder to see if they have been followed.

They emerge into the street only to find their path blocked by a wagon that has overturned, the horribly mangled body of its driver spilled half-out into the street, his ruined jaw gaping in a sick grin. Marcus exchanges a quick, speaking look with Esca, deciding in a moment to abandon their plan, pressing in towards the centre of town until they can double back.

The road ahead is narrow, littered with rubbish and the wreck of heavy pushcart, forcing them to go through single-file. One of the afflicted stumbles out of a doorway directly in Marcus' path, so that Clara shies violently, staggering on the slippery cobbles. With little power in his right knee, Marcus is thrown half from his saddle, clinging to Clara's mane and scrambling desperately for purchase as she sidles down the narrow space away from the spectre slouching towards them.

He gives up and drops to both feet, drawing his sword as more of them spill out of the doorway, cutting him off from the others. There is no time to remount, and nowhere to run to if he did. _Mithras, Lord of Light, hear thy son's prayer._ He hears the muffled thud of ponies' hooves as his gladius bites deep into the neck of a bull-shouldered corpse--not enough, for one of his enormous hands scrabbles at Marcus' tunic, his mouth gaping wide over the ruin of his neck.

Wrenching back for a second strike, Marcus' sandals slide on the same wet leaves that had caught Clara, and he goes down, the muscles of his groin and thigh wrenching as his good knee hits the paving stones. The pain is a distant concern as he struggles to gain his balance, putting all of his strength behind a thrust that drives the point of his gladius up through the fleshy folds under his attacker's chin. He scrambles backwards to get out of the way as it falls, knowing that he will not be able to regain his feet in time to meet the rest of the onslaught.

"Marcus!" Cottia kicks her mount, wild-eyed with terror, against the wavebreak of bodies separating them, Bricca's flailing hooves dashing one of the spectres to the paving stones. Somewhere, he can hear Cub snarling. Cottia's light sword plunges in and out of the soft spot of the base of another's skull, and then Esca is there in the wake as she barrels past, his sword describing swift, brutal arcs and sending bodies sprawling as Marcus gets his feet back beneath him.

Cottia has run down Clara, sidling Bricca up alongside her until she can catch the reins, holding her steady as Marcus limps to meet them.

"Are you hurt?" Cottia asks, her eyes fearful. "Oh, Marcus--"

"I do not think so," Marcus says, clinging to Clara's saddle for just a moment, to get his breath back. There is no time for weakness. Agony shoots through his bad leg and the muscles he has pulled when he springs back into the saddle, and it is a clumsy, painful affair to find his seat. He looks at Cottia in wonderment. "And I have you to thank for that." He presses his fist to his heart in a gesture of salute.

"We must be gone from here before more of them come," Galarius says, pitching his voice low. "Are you fit to ride, Marcus?"

Marcus nods, gritting his teeth against the dull ache that throbs through his abused muscles with each of Clara's strides. "We should carry on with our initial plan."

It takes another detour to finally arrive at their goal, the modest but well-fortified row of houses east of the forum. The way is not clear of the afflicted, but this time, their little party rides up on them from the rear. The creatures are busy feasting, buried in a welter of ruined flesh, and Esca takes them down before they have time to do more than turn round. The ponies will not pass by the remains of the victim, and secretly, Marcus is glad of the excuse.

"We should be secure enough for the moment, if the house is empty," Esca says, when they have closed the courtyard gate of the first house behind them.

"I will check," Galarius says. Cottia shares a quick look with Esca, and then strides forward to accompany him. Galarius frowns but does not protest, and Marcus has scarce a moment to feel a flare of pride in Cottia for winning through the old surgeon's disdain before Esca is at his side.

"Is there pain anywhere?" Esca asks. "Get down, and let me look."

"Nowhere save this wretched leg and some splendid bruises," Marcus says, wincing as he tries to dismount. Esca laces his fingers together in a cup to ease Marcus' way down, but pain still makes the breath hiss between his teeth.

Esca wipes the gore and mud from Marcus' hands with his cloak. His hands are gentle on Marcus' bruised limbs, lifting aside the fabric of his tunic to touch the skin underneath.

"Praise be to whichever god turned Cottia to his purpose, your skin is whole and well," Esca says hoarsely. "Marcus, I failed you, I should have been nearer--"

"Do not be a fool," Marcus says. "You were doing exactly as you should have, and it is done now." He takes Esca's face carefully between his hands and kisses him. "This is not the time," Marcus says. "But _you did not fail me_."

Esca gives him a small smile and offers a hand to pull him to his feet.

A tawny-striped cat crouches just outside the storeroom door, and she hisses at Marcus when he passes by, streaking off to hide under the kitchen table. "Consus grant that she has kept the grain stores untouched," Marcus says.

"It appears that she did," Galarius says, shifting sacks of wheat, barley, and pulses. "Here, Esca, help me carry these outside."

"And here is the key to the cellar," Cottia says, brandishing a heavy iron key. There is a lit glim in her other hand. "Can you manage the stairs? I will carry the light for you."

The door swings open, and a draft of foetid air washes over them. "Ugh!" Cottia says, her hand going to the sword at her belt, a long conditioned reaction these days. She raises the glim, but there is no sign of movement under its flickering light.

"I will go down," Marcus says. He thumps on the frame of the cellar door, to draw out anything that might be lying in wait. The cellar cannot be that large; surely if there were danger, they would have seen it by now. Cottia follows a careful space behind him, keeping the glim lifted high.

The smell grows worse as they descend, until Marcus is almost tempted to turn back empty-handed to escape it. In the corner of the cellar, half-hidden behind a cask of wine, the faint light falls upon a brightly coloured fold of fabric.

"Ah, no," Marcus breathes. It is a woman, very long dead, with two smaller corpses curled up in her lap. There is a great deal of old blood.

"Why did she not even try to save them?" Cottia whispers, turning away.

"Perhaps she did," Marcus says. "Perhaps someone was supposed to return for them and never came. We cannot know." He scuffs at the earthen floor with the heel of his sandal, bringing up a few handfuls of dust that he scatters reverently over the huddled bodies. "May their souls find rest."

Cottia echoes him with a soft prayer in British. She does not protest when Marcus turns aside at last from the bodies and begins to take stock of the stores available. There are two wheels of cheese, still in their wrappings and wax, a greater prize than Marcus had dared hope for.

"Forgive us for disturbing your home," he whispers to the spirits of the woman and her children, in case they are listening. "And many thanks for your generosity."

They lock the door firmly behind them when they emerge blinking back into the light of the kitchen. Esca and Galarius have returned.

"All is in readiness," Galarius says. "We need only make it back in one piece."

Marcus hopes fervently that that is not asking for too much. But the gods must still be smiling on them, for make it back they do, with only a handful of minor scuffles, before the afternoon draws in. Marcus' spirits are high as they ride triumphantly through the gate.

"See what we have brought back for you," he says grandly to Sassticca, showing her the bulging packs and full baskets. "And there is honey too."

"I'm sure I can find a use for that, young master," she says with a cackling laugh. "No, do not trouble yourself--Marcipor will bring it in, as soon as I find his worthless hide."

"Our brave foragers have returned!" Uncle Aquila booms, coming into the forecourt. "Well, my Marcus, will we be feasting through the winter?"

"If beans and cheese are your idea of a feast, then certainly." Marcus grins. "At least we will not starve."

"Well done, lad. Didn't I say that you would earn your keep?" His great bushy brows lower over his narrowed eyes. "But from the looks of you, it was not all smooth sailing."

"Not quite," Marcus says, fingering the aching bump over his good knee. Esca is at his side in a matter of moments to help him dismount and begin unloading Clara's packs. "But we are all well and safe. With your leave, I did promise an offering."

"Of course, of course," says Uncle Aquila. "I will not keep you." He claps Marcus on the shoulder and goes to congratulate Galarius on the success of their mission.

"I will see to the ponies," Esca says, already leading Clara away. "No, go and make your offering," he says, when Marcus tries to follow. "I am not fit company for any but the ponies right now."

"I will not have you going off to stew over how you think you failed me," Marcus says, reaching out to grasp Esca's wrist.

"You have my word that I am not," Esca says. "It is that I need a moment away from all of this noise, no more."

Marcus is not sure that is the whole truth of it, but neither is it for him to go thrusting in where he is clearly not wanted. He lets go of Esca's wrist reluctantly and tries to clear his mind and heart to carry out his sacrifice.

When Marcus brings the cockerel to the kitchen for dressing, he finds Cottia trying to reign in Sassticca's joyful abandon at having an occasion for which to prepare a feast.

"I almost forgot!" Cottia says, reaching under her cloak and producing an amphorae about the size of Marcus' fist. It is garum, of the kind that has only rarely found its way within the range of his spending. "I know how much you have missed it," Cottia says. "I am sorry there are no mussels to prepare with it."

"It will go just as well with our pottage," Marcus says, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and kissing the top of her head. "My thanks, sweet."

"I will take it back if you try to put it on anything I must eat," Cottia warns, but she is laughing.

Sassticca squeezes by them with a pointed look, and they flee out to the kitchen garden before they rouse her ire any further. Marcus strips out of his tunic and sinks down onto the bench by the washing bucket with a grimace, stretching his lame leg out over the length of it. Cottia crouches down on her heels beside him, hissing through her teeth in sympathy at the impressive swathe of bruises over his ribs.

"It is nothing," Marcus says, ignoring the dull ache of the bruises and the sharper protest of pulled muscles as he leans down to reach the water, scooping up a handful to splash over his face and torso. "Proserpina's tits, that's cold!" He looks at Cottia apologetically, but she has thrown her head back with laughter.

"Oh, it isn't that bad," Cottia scoffs, unpinning her cloak to splash quickly through her ablutions.

"You lips are turning blue," Marcus teases, tugging at the end of her braid. She grins at him, wrapping her cloak round her again. "Come inside before we catch cold."

His leg has gone stiff and painful from sitting on the cold stone, and it takes a moment for him to be sure that it will not buckle under his weight. Cottia gives him a concerned look.

"Are you sure you should not go to Galarius?"

"There is little enough he can do for a pulled muscle and some bruises," Marcus says. "It will be fine."

Cottia sniffs. "Well, do you lie down and rest before dinner, at least." She has never been much inclined to fussing or wifely devotion, but she stokes the fire in the brazier and kneels to unlace his sandals, refusing to let him help.

"I never did thank you properly for your brave action today," Marcus murmurs, pulling her up to sit on the bed beside him.

"You do not need to thank me."

"Nevertheless, you have my thanks. It comes to me that perhaps I was wrong to speak against your learning to fight."

"Perhaps?" Cottia says archly, looking up at him.

"Will you leave me none of my pride, little vixen?" Marcus says, poking her.

She laughs and stretches up to kiss him, sweet and affectionate, but there is a demanding edge to it that Marcus is not expecting, her sharp little teeth teasing at his lower lip. It makes his breath come faster. He trails kisses down the line of her jaw, catching her earlobe between his teeth to see what she will do. Cottia makes a delighted sound, a throaty, gasping laugh, and Marcus wonders how he can never have heard her make such a noise before. He thinks of Esca, and the litany of gasps and sobs and moans that he makes under Marcus' hands, and that same urgent, tender wanting rises up in Marcus now.

"Cottia, my heart..." He does not know what to say, so he kisses her again, overwhelmed by a wild, aching joy at the sudden finding of this new thing tangled up in the affection and friendship between them, and she laughs, rising up on her knees to meet him. She has already stripped down to her shift, and between kisses she wriggles out of it, letting it pool around her waist and then tossing it carelessly to the floor.

Marcus has only ever been with her, and with Esca, and it occurs to him now that he does not know very much about how to make this good for her, that he knows better how Esca likes to be touched than he does his own wife. He has always tried to be gentle, but it seemed strange, when this act between them had been grounded mostly in duty, to take any longer than necessary about it.

"Like this," Cottia says when he hesitates, pulling his hand to her breast. Marcus rubs his thumb over the hard little peak of her nipple, and she sighs, arching into him.

Cottia trails biting kisses down his neck, sucking a dark bruise just above the curve of his shoulder and fumbling to help him out of his braccae. She slides into his lap, careful not to put any weight on his bad leg, and wraps her fingers around his cock, the edge of her thumb fitting up just against the head, rubbing slow, maddening circles over the flared edge. Marcus makes a strangled noise, and Cottia looks delighted.

She tightens her grip and strips experimentally at his length, her other hand wrapped around the back of his neck to help her balance. Forgetting entirely about the strain on his bad leg, Marcus thrusts up into her hand, biting his lip and sinking back onto his elbows at the white-hot rush of pain through his abused muscles.

"Shh, lie still," Cottia says, bending down to kiss him. Her hair is coming down from its braid, sticking in dark tendrils to her sweat-slick shoulders and falling like a curtain over their faces. Marcus twists his hands into it. Cottia licks lazily into his mouth, stroking him back to full hardness. Marcus rolls her nipples between his fingers, and she whines against his jaw, grinding insistently against his hip.

"Go on," Marcus breathes, urging her back across his lap. "Cottia, I want to feel you." He guides his cockhead against her, and she presses her fingers over his, sinking down until he is fully seated inside of her. She smiles, rocking forward in little teasing movements, until he groans, his fingers digging bruise-rough into her hips.

"Give me your hand," she says, and positions his thumb just above where their bodies meet. The flesh there is slick and hot, and when he rubs experimentally at it, Cottia shudders, rolling hard into him. He does it again, and she keens sharply, her head falling back as she rides him. When she comes, seizing around him, Marcus pushes himself upright heedless of the pain in his leg, to wrap his arms around her, kissing all over her face. She makes a little hiccuping noise of laughter, still moving over him, the last flutters of her climax bringing him off deep inside of her.

She presses her forehead against his shoulder, sighing, and he strokes her hair, sinking back down into the pillows with a pained grunt. After a moment, Cottia lifts herself gingerly off of him, rubbing her fingers over the ugly scar on his thigh.

"You were meant to be resting," she scolds. Marcus gives her an incredulous look, and she grins, kissing his shoulder. He feels wrung out and joyful, and very much as though he would like never to move again, unless perhaps it were to make love to Cottia some more.

But his stomach grumbles, and Cottia says, "Sassticca would never forgive us if we missed her feast."

Marcus sighs and pushes himself reluctantly upright to search for his tunic. Cottia reaches out to smooth his dishevelled hair. Her own she attacks fiercely with a comb, until it falls in burnished waves down her back, and Marcus cannot help but run his fingers through it once more before they dress and go to join the others at dinner.

Esca gives Cottia a knowing look across the table, and Marcus tries to pretend he did not see it, half-horrified that they should share such things between them. He wonders if they have spoken of it, and shuts down that line of thought immediately. Uncle Aquila too has an amused glint in his eye, and Marcus despairs, wondering if they had really been that loud.

Fortunately, Sassticca arrives then with the first course. "You have truly outdone yourself," Uncle Aquila says, helping himself to a leg of the cockerel that had late been Marcus' thank-offering.

There is little conversation as they eat their fill for the first time in months. Every new bite that Marcus takes seems as though it is the most delicious thing he has ever tasted, first the chicken and then the crumbling cheese and beans spicy with garum. He is stuffed nearly to bursting when Sassticca brings out a plate of honeycakes, the pastry still piping hot from the oven.

"Sassticca, you are a jewel among women," Marcus says, and Cottia snorts. "You have other charms, my love." She swats at his hand, and everyone laughs. For a moment, in the bright lamplight, with their bellies full and the strong walls around them, laughter ringing in the air, the danger and hardship feels very far away, as though they might yet live out their lives in peace.

By the time Marcus has eaten as many honeycakes as he can hold and drained a final cup of wine, the room is shimmering pleasantly, and he thinks of his warm bed with longing. He wobbles a little when he climbs to his feet. Esca smirks, coming to sling Marcus' arm over his shoulders and help him along the colonnade. But Esca is not so sober himself, and so their progress is slow and stumbling.

"Sleep well," Esca says, leaning into Marcus' side in the colonnade between their doorways. Marcus presses a sloppy kiss to his cheek.

"And you."

Esca wipes his cheek on his tunic, but he is smiling.

Marcus kisses Cottia too, when she comes to bed. She shakes her head at him--fondly, he thinks--and curls up next to him, pillowing her head on his chest. Marcus splays his fingers out over her back, twining a stray lock of her hair through his fingers as he falls asleep.


	6. Chapter 6

It is still very early dawn when Cub wakes them with a fearful howl. Cottia bolts upright, instantly going for her weapon. Moments later, Esca bursts into the doorway, his sword upraised. There is a thump from upstairs, and a shout, followed by the sound of Rufrius Galarius' heavy footsteps thundering up the staircase, the hounds' claws scrabbling after him. Cub breaks into another wavering howl.

Hobbled by his leg, Marcus cannot keep pace. "Cottia, Esca, go up with them!" Cottia obeys, but Esca shifts his sword, coming to help Marcus up the stairs as he had helped him to bed. Marcus is furiously impatient with their slow pace, but the commotion upstairs has gone silent by the time they make it to the landing.

There, on the floor of his uncle's private sanctum, is a body sprawled ungracefully in a spreading circle of blood. His mind still fogged by sleep and wine, it is not until Marcus sees the features on the head lying a few feet away that he realises it is Marcipor.

"Uncle!" 

His Uncle is sitting quietly at his desk, his hand on Cottia's bright hair as she kneels at his feet, weeping. There is a bloody gash on his arm. The bottom seems to drop out of Marcus' stomach, and it is only Esca's strong arm around him that keeps him upright.

"Uncle, no! No, you cannot--this is not--" He is babbling, he realises as though from a great distance. It simply cannot be possible, that is all. Not here, not like this.

"I am afraid it is exactly what it looks like, my dear boy," Uncle Aquila says. 

Rufrius Galarius, his face pale and haggard beneath his stubble, puts a hand on his old friend's shoulder. 

Marcus is seized by a sudden fury towards his uncle's old slave, the filthy coward. But it is an impotent rage, and Esca grips the back of his neck, grounding him again.

"Later, Marcus." 

He does not want to think of later, does not want to think at all, because _later_ , his uncle will be dead. Marcus swallows down a sob. He will not let these last moments with his uncle be tainted by weakness. When he is steady, Esca lets him go, carefully, and Marcus kneels at his uncle's feet, kissing his hand. He is dimly aware of Cottia standing up, of Esca putting his arms around her, muffling her sobs in his shoulder as Marcus tries to keep his own tears from falling.

"There seems to be little purpose in drawing this out any longer than we must," his uncle says. Marcus presses his forehead against the old man's knee. "It will be full daylight soon," Uncle Aquila continues. "The garden seems as fitting a place as any." 

"I will do it," Marcus says, in a voice clogged with unshed tears.

"No, Marcus. That is not a burden I wish for you to carry. Rufrius Galarius and I have already had words on the matter." He pats Marcus' shoulder, and Marcus rises to his feet, scrubbing his hands over his face. "The house is yours, of course, and everything else, though how much good it will all do you, in these days--well." Uncle Aquila exchanges a long look with Rufrius Galarius, before rising to lead the slow procession down the stairs and out into the courtyard. 

It seems to Marcus, leaning again on Esca, to take an eternity, and yet it could not possibly take long enough. Rufrius Galarius takes up his sword and a whetsone and disappears out into the kitchen garden to attend to that business. 

Uncle Aquila sits on the marble bench beneath the pear tree, wrapping his cloak firmly around him. Marcus sits down by his side, forcing himself to meet his uncle's eyes.

"I suppose I should have some cleverly phrased wisdom for you, Marcus," he says, patting Marcus' knee. "But I can only tell you that you have proved a credit to our family name, and I should have been proud to have you for my son."

"Thank you," Marcus whispers. There is so much that he wants to say, thanking Uncle Aquila for taking him in, for the help he gave with starting the farm, for giving him and Esca houseroom after their journey. But his throat constricts on the words, and there is Galarius, the naked blade of his gladius shining in the rising light. 

"You will be all right," Uncle Aquila says. He folds Marcus into his arms, squeezing him hard. "The Light of the Sun be with you, nephew."

"And--and with you," Marcus says, saluting him. 

"I am so very sorry," Galarius says. There are tears standing in his eyes, Marcus sees, but his sword-arm is steady. 

"It is a better death than what comes to many old men," Uncle Aquila says. "I am ready when you are, my friend." 

Galarius salutes him. Uncle Aquila stares levelly ahead, and does not flinch when Galarius raises his blade. Marcus does not look away, paying his last respects in the only way that the soldier in him knows how. 

In death, Uncle Aquila's body looks smaller than Marcus would ever have imagined that he could, so much smaller, and unspeakably frail. The tears he has been holding back come then, and with them deep, wrenching sobs that Marcus can scarcely believe are coming from his own throat. Cub whines softly, pressing his cold muzzle against Marcus' hand.

Cottia's arms are around his waist, her face pressed damp against his breast, and Esca is a steady presence at his shoulder. Marcus lets himself sink into them, wracked by a grief that seems too big for his body to bear, until it seems like only their enfolding arms are keeping him from shuddering apart into a thousand pieces. 

There are a dozen things to do, preparing the body, building a pyre, all of the business of proper funeral, for Marcus will not give his uncle anything less. It all seems impossibly far away. Esca squeezes his hand.

"Tell me what you need for me to do," he says. 

Marcus forces himself to think. "Marcipor," he says at last. "The body must be disposed of." Marcus would crucify the wretch, if he were alive, and still consider it less than he deserves. But he is not, and it would do nothing to help Uncle Aquila, anyway. "And--Sassticca." Marcipor would have gotten to her first; likely she had not even woken. Marcus hopes not.

"It will be seen to," Esca says. "And I will send her on the way to our gods, so that her spirit may find peace." 

When he has gone, Cottia squares her shoulders, taking a step back to look up at Marcus. "It is for me to prepare Uncle Aquila's body." There are no daughters, no wife or sisters to help her, as there should be, not even any slaves. This is the second time Cottia has had to shoulder a burden that should never have been hers to bear alone, and Marcus is unspeakably grateful for her courage.

"Thank you, Cottia." 

For Marcus and Galarius then, there is the task of building a pyre. Marcus wishes that he had some comfort to offer the old surgeon, but there is no space for anything in his heart but his own grief. They go about their work in silence. 

It seems absurd and macabre to try to dress the headless corpse in Uncle Aquila's finest toga, and in the end, they wrap his body in a shroud made of a clean bedsheet, and Marcus carefully closes his uncle's eyes and places a bright denarius over his tongue before pulling the folds of the shroud over his face. There is no one to make a death mask, no mourners or musicians, no priests to preside over the ritual, but Marcus is determined that his uncle should lie in state nonetheless, his shrouded feet pointed towards the atrium door, with libations of wine and incense. Rome's rule may have fallen away from Calleva, but this is a Roman house still and his uncle will have as many of the rites due him as Marcus can provide. 

But Marcus cannot stand the oppressive silence of their mourning, where there should be music and oratory, and so he makes his painful way up to watchtower with only Cub for company to begin cleaning up the drying blood. His knees begin to ache before he is even halfway done, but he forces himself to keep at it, until the water and rags are too soiled to continue.

Cottia catches him when he comes back downstairs to wash them out. "Oh, Marcus," she says, taking the bucket from him. 

"I had to do something," Marcus says. He will go mad, with nothing to distract his hands. 

"I will help you," Cottia says. She brings fresh rags and another bucket of water, and does not try to talk to him as they work. By the time the floor is clean, dusk has fallen outside, and she kindles the lamp on Uncle Aquila's desk. The study looks exactly as it had when Uncle Aquila had lived, the papers heaped in untidy piles on the desk, bedraggled pens littering every available surface. Marcus should go through his papers and clean the place up, but there seems to be so little point to it. He will never use this study, for what accounts have they to keep, or correspondence to write? Better that it stay as Uncle Aquila had left it. 

That night, Esca comes to Marcus' room unbidden and sits down on the edge of the bed, his hip pressed against Marcus' drawn up knees where he is lying with his head on Cottia's lap. No one says anything, but Marcus feels the pressure in his chest ease a little, to have them both there. He falls asleep pressed between them, and does not dream.

They light the pyre the following evening, as the weak light of the sunset lingers in the sky. Marcus speaks the Valedictory through chattering teeth, as the flames leap up through the piled branches, licking up the trails of scented oil and incense. Beside him, Cottia makes a soft keening, the only lamentation that Uncle Aquila's spirit will have. But it is enough. She stays by Marcus' side, with Esca on the other, watching the flames burn, until they begin to sink down into embers, the body crumbled to bone and ash.

Esca brings a torch to light Marcus' work as he sifts through the remains, filling the funeral urn that should rest in the _columbarium_ , at peace. But there is no peace to be found there or anywhere else in Calleva now, and so what is left of Uncle Aquila will lie in the distant corner of the courtyard, in the shade of the hawthorne tree. Marcus shoulders the task of burial himself, as is fitting, but he is glad for Cottia and Esca's silent company.

When the burial is done and the final libation made, dark, unwatered wine soaking into the raw earth like blood, Cottia washes the dirt and ash from his hands. By then, Marcus' tears have run dry, caught up in a tight knot of grief at the base of his throat. Esca comes again to sleep in their room, pressed up warm and solid against Marcus' back, and Marcus cannot find it in his heart to be anything but grateful.


	7. Chapter 7

The tenth day after Uncle Aquila's death, Rufrius Galarius announces his intention to go back to Spain. "Aquila was the last friend I had left in this benighted province," he says. "I am ready to go home." 

_Home_ , Marcus thinks, his mind going back to their little downland valley. He would give anything for them to be able to return there and live in peace. But he thinks that it will be a very long time before anything like peace returns to Britain.

"I think that we should go with you," Marcus says, looking at Esca and Cottia. "The road will be safer if we travel it together, and we cannot stay here." 

"Why not?" Cottia says. "We are doing well enough for ourselves!"

"For now," Galarius says. "But who can tell how long it will be until the Eagles reclaim the inland province? Better to get on a ship at Regnorum and start again on the continent. This land is overrun with death."

"We could go to Rome to find your Aunt and Uncle," Marcus says to Cottia, after Galarius has retired. "Uncle Aquila left enough coin that we might start again, in Etruria." He thinks of his childhood hills, as he has not done in many months. They are a pale shadow behind the love he holds for the familiar chalk hills of home, but he could love them again. Cottia and Esca could be happy there. 

Cottia's face has grown sharp and wary. "I do not want to go to Rome. Or to the continent at all." 

Marcus does not understand. "There is nothing left here, Cottia! We have stayed longer than ever we should have already. You were willing enough to go once."

"When I lived in my uncle's house," Cottia says, in British. 

"What difference, then?" Marcus demands, and he does not drop into the same tongue, but continues in Latin. "Rome is still Rome! Everyone else has gone, why not us?"

"Because Britain is our home! It is _my_ home, and I will not leave it to take up the ways of a Roman matron." She looks to Esca, pleading. "It is your home too! Surely you are not ready to give up and retreat to Rome?" 

Esca gives her a long, measuring look. "It is my home, but there are other allegiances that call more strongly." He glances at Marcus. "And it is in my heart that starting over in a living land may serve better than soldiering on in a dead one."

"We have only seen Calleva!" Cottia retorts. "If Rome can hold the coast, then my people may still hold their lands. We could go to them! Or perhaps north of the wall it is safe."

"But we cannot know, and it is not worth the risk," Marcus says. "Would you be content to live under the walls of Regnorum or Dubris, where the Eagles hold sway?"

" _No_ ," Cottia spits. "You could not make me." 

"Will you stay here by yourself?" Marcus snaps. "It comes down to the choice between that or Roman walls." 

"Only because you are a hidebound coward who cannot stand alone without Rome's laws behind him!" Cottia shouts, all of the furious colour drained from her cheeks. 

Marcus' face feels hot with fury, but his voice sounds very cold and calm when he says, "If you will not consent to live in the cities still held here, then the matter is decided. We will go to Regnorum and make further plans after arriving in Gaul. I will not speak any further on it." 

"Cottia--" Esca takes a step toward her, but Cottia is already storming out of the room.

"Why will she not see sense?" Marcus demands. "It is pure mule-headed stubbornness--"

"You certainly would know about that," Esca says, in his own tongue. "Do you expect to begin to treat her as your equal, and then have her sit quietly when you decide again to direct the manner of her life as though she were a child?" 

"I thought you were in accord with me!" It seems cruelly unfair to be beset by both of them, when there is only one clear choice and not Marcus' fault that they must make it. 

"Yes," Esca says. "I can see the sense in your plan. But that does not mean I must like it. You could have dealt more fairly with Cottia, today."

"There is no other course!" Marcus says, throwing his hands up in frustration. "If there were any way to know where in Britain might be safe, I would stay. But there is not, and the continent is our best hope. She wanted to learn how to fight; why should she not take orders?"

"Because learning to fight does not mean she wanted to be a soldier!" Esca says. "She did it to ensure her freedom, and now that she has had it, you command that she must bend again to Rome's ways, without even a voice in the matter. Tell me that you do not understand how that comes hard."

"There is nothing else to be done," Marcus says. Esca may be right--Esca usually is right--that he had dealt ill with Cottia, but that cannot be undone and does not change the facts of the thing. 

"How should that make it any easier?" Esca says. "If we must go back to Rome, then so be it, Marcus. But it was not the Aquila _pater familias_ that either of us thought to follow." 

Yet there is nothing else that Marcus knows how to be, with everything else that he has built his life on crumbling into ruin. Esca is looking on him sadly, but offers no gesture of comfort. 

"Best get some sleep," Esca says, turning to go. "It is a long journey we have before us."

The bed seems very cold and empty without either of them there, and Marcus lies awake well into the night, his mind and heart churning with sorrow and guilt. 

On the morrow, they begin planning and stocking for the journey. It is a bad time for travelling, but Marcus and Galarius are both in agreement that they cannot afford to wait for spring.

"It will be a rough crossing, this time of year," Marcus says. "My mind would be easier if we went up to Dubris and crossed from there. Rome would not have easily surrendered that port."

"A rough crossing is preferable to fighting our way across the countryside. And if Londinium has fallen..."

"We will want to stay far away from Londinium," Marcus agrees. Even if it had not fallen, doubtless the countryside nearby would be swarming. "Regnorum it is."

"It is in my mind that we will do better to avoid the Roman road entirely," Esca says. "Even in this weather, it may be safer."

Such is the nature of their planning. Cottia does not attend, and Marcus has not yet brought himself to talk to her, though after that first night, she had begun to sleep by him again, and Esca with her. Marcus wonders if it is because they have had words between them. 

Cottia has not given any sign of forgiving Esca for taking Marcus' side, at least not that Marcus can see, but when Esca moves to retreat to his own room, Cottia will not hear of anything but that he should stay with them. Marcus has no idea what she means by it, but he sleeps more soundly for being able to find them only a handsbreadth away when he wakes in the night, though he finds it no less awkward to bear Cottia's stony silence in company. 

When he finally takes her hand, determined to promise that he will try to be better, she does not pull away, but at the cool expression on her face, Marcus cannot bring himself to apologise, his pride rising up hot in his throat and choking off the words. Not yet. He tells himself he is not the only one at fault, and ignores the look in Esca's eyes when Cottia has gone. 

He sees them together, Cottia and Esca, leaning into one another on the edge of the little pool of light cast by the lamp burning in the _lararium,_ Cottia's head tucked under Esca's chin, his fingers tangled in her hair. Some part of Marcus' heart, the part that is still bound up in Rome, urges him to to step in, but where he looks to find anger, there is none, only an aching tenderness. There is no space for him in that moment, but later that night, it is his bed they come to, lying with him between them, Esca's breath warm on the back of his neck and Cottia's hair against his face. Marcus is not sure what it means or even what he wants it to mean, and he tells himself there is no point in thinking on it until they reach Rome.

"I thought we might shelter on the farm, on the way south," Marcus finally brings himself to say to Cottia, only the evening before their intended departure. He has not mentioned it to Esca or Galarius, mulling over the wisdom of it over and over. But the journey south is the last chance they will have to see of their home, and though Marcus expects it would grieve all of them, it seems to him important at least to consider it. 

Cottia looks up at him sharply. "Why? We could not stay."

"No. I wish that we could," Marcus says. "I thought perhaps it would make it easier, if we were to bid the place farewell." It sounds unbearably foolish to say it aloud, and his words do not begin to touch on the furious, burning need he has to see the place one last time, but Cottia's expression has softened a little. "It is for you to decide," Marcus says.

"You are trying very hard, aren't you?" Cottia says, the corners of her mouth lifting very slightly.

"Yes," Marcus admits. "I cannot make any promises about what life will be like on the continent, but we will set about it together, the way we used to, you and Esca and I."

"Then if Esca too is willing, I think that we should go home, one last time."

It is not quite forgiveness, Marcus thinks, but it is a start.

They do not lock up the rooms to Uncle Aquila's house when they go. Everything that is not coming with them will stand exactly as it had done during their time here, and the food in the larder will be left for the rats or for other scavengers or perhaps merely for the rot of time. In his heart, making a final libation to the gods of this place, Marcus knows that they will not ever return. He pours the last few drops of the wine into the earth over Uncle Aquila's ashes, asking for a blessing on their travel and an auspicious beginning to the new lives they are going towards. 

When they ride out over the old earthworks for the last time, it is only Marcus who looks back.


	8. Chapter 8

Neither the ponies nor their riders are in any trim to speed down to Regnorum, even in good weather. They make poor time, and Marcus begins to wonder if it might not be worth the risk of following the road. But he remembers the vast, tireless horde they had passed around on their way north, and cannot bring himself to suggest it. 

That night Esca sleeps curled around Cottia on a make-shift bed of pine boughs, and Marcus takes the first watch, near enough that he can hear their breath in the crystal stillness. Somewhere in the distance, a wolf's howl shivers through the air, and Cub whines, making Cottia stir fretfully in her sleep. Esca hushes her, tightening his arms around her. Marcus turns his eyes back to the darkness, his lips moving in a silent litany of prayer until Galarius comes to replace him at the watch. Marcus lies down beside Cottia, sliding his hand down into the warmth where Esca is pressed against her.

The next morning, Marcus' leg is in agony, made worse by the sucking mud that means they must spend most of the day walking the ponies. By the time they stop for the night, he is good for little more than helping Cottia to light the little spluttering fire and prepare their meagre travelling ration. 

"That is enough," Esca says. "No matter the dangers of the road, it will be better than this slow freezing. We will be the better part of a month getting there at this rate." He comes to sit down by Marcus unbidden, his cold fingers pressing at the tight muscle through the braccae. It helps, a little.

"We should stay with our plan and make for the farm," Marcus says. "It is like to be the safest place to rest for a few days, and then we can make our way to the road to continue south." 

He looks to Galarius to see what his opinion might be, but the old surgeon only shrugs, his eyes on the embers of the fire. "A group will go better than one; I care not what route we go, so long as it takes us to Regnorum."

Six days after leaving Calleva, the land begins to take on that familiar contour that speaks to Marcus' weary heart as _home_. He is tired, filthy, and sore, but those things seem to weigh less heavily upon him as their bedraggled little party presses on. Even Cub, trudging along by Marcus' side, seems in better spirits. But it is not all to the good. In the forest, there has been little danger of encountering any spectres, but coming out into the open, with the village less than a day's ride away, they must be on the alert again. 

They meet the little stream that burbles down the valley, running through the copse on the far side of the farmhouse. There is the hawthorne tree, brooding over the track that winds over the hill and out to join the road. When the neat red roof of their villa comes into view, Marcus' throat aches. Even with the fields lying fallow, it looks very like it had done when they rode away, and tears prick behind Marcus' eyes, knowing that they must ride away again. 

But for now, it will be a solid roof over their heads and a fire on the hearth, and that will be enough. They can bring water from the spring for washing, and there will be more than dried meat and buccellum for dinner and perhaps the mattresses will not have gone to ruin. Even the thought is enough to make Marcus feel a little warmer.

That comfort drains away when Cub growls in warning, and Marcus sees the spectres clumped in the lee of the barn, perhaps a dozen of them. They stare blindly about them, swaying a little like wind-swept withies, shuffling every now and then against the wall. Marcus wonders how long they have crowded there, wonders if they have any notion of the passing of time. But there is no time to stand idle; already the clouded eyes have begun to turn towards them, some uncanny sense alerting to the living warmth beating fragile in their breasts, and if there are any others nearby they will be drawn all the faster. Cub looks anxiously up at Marcus for a command.

"Easy," Marcus murmurs. There is no time to pick them off from afar. "If we are swift, we can pin them against the barn wall before they have a chance to disperse."

It is not an easy fight. Marcus' gladius is too heavy in his hands, his reactions dulled by exhaustion and cold. There are rotting, clumsy hands grasping at his sandals, trying to drag him down. Esca cuts them away, Melys' hooves crashing on the fallen bodies, caving in their soft skulls. Against the barn wall, Cottia's light sword flickers in swift, killing strokes, a savage pride illuminating her narrow, drawn face. 

When it is done, her shoulders slump, and she wavers, as though it is only force of will to win through the fighting that has kept her in the saddle this long. 

"Nearly there," Marcus says, giving her a wane smile. He can no longer feel the aching in his leg, and knows that it will get its own with a vengeance when he tries to put any weight on it. "The ponies should do well enough turned out to pasture until the evening." 

The farmhouse door still fits snug on its hinges, and it creaks sharply when Marcus presses against it. Cub barrels past, his tail waving frantically, darting in to sniff at all of the corners of the atrium. Watching him, Marcus grins, seeing his own feelings mirrored in the young wolf's excitement. 

"I think we are safe," Esca says, a smile creeping across his face. "But I will make the rounds, to be sure."

Marcus tries to follow him, but Cottia grabs him by the arm. "No, sit down before you fall." He obeys, and she comes to stand behind him for a moment, bending down to wrap her arms around his shoulders, her cheek pressed against his, here amidst the wreck of their lives.

"We will build a new villa," Marcus promises her. "And you and Esca shall have herds that will be the envy of the countryside."

"Yes," Cottia says. "We will build a good life, again." Marcus can tell that she does not believe it, not yet, but he prays that someday she will. He covers her hands with his own, still cold from the winter wind.

"All is well," Esca says, coming up behind them. He puts a hand on Cottia's shoulder. "A little dusty and moth-eaten, perhaps, but we will be comfortable enough."

Cottia straightens up. "The mattress will want shaking out and I'm sure the kitchen has gone quite to ruin. And we will want water for cooking. Yes, and washing," she adds, at Marcus' plaintive look. "There is enough wood for tonight still in the shed."

"Galarius and I will manage," Esca says, but he offers his hand anyway as Marcus struggles to his feet. 

Far from easing his mind, being home again has made Marcus all the more anxious at the thought of Esca going down to the copse, even with Galarius to guard his back. There is no knowing what may await them. He takes a few experimental steps; his leg is in a bad way, but it will hold him. 

"You made a fine beginning here," Galarius says, as they make their way down towards the stream. "There is good land in Spain, if it is in your mind to take up horse breeding again on the continent. I may have a contact or two who could help you find your feet."

"We would be grateful," Marcus says. Perhaps Cottia would like Spain better than Etruria, to be a little further away from the centre of the empire. He has never been to Spain, but he imagines it must be very like Rome, hot and sunny, and his heart aches again for the imminent loss of the wild wind and the changeable skies of Britain. He tells himself it does not matter what they are leaving behind; together, they will be all right. 

"After this journey, I can think of worse things than settling somewhere where the sun always shone," Esca says. His eyes are faintly amused under the fringe of his hair, and for the first time since Lucius' death, Marcus feels his heart lift with anticipation for the future. 

As soon as they return, Cottia immediately puts the bulk of the water on to heat for washing. Underfoot in the tiny kitchen, Esca goes to see to the bedding and Marcus follows along behind. 

When Esca drags his pallet back into his narrow cell and offers it to Galarius, Marcus sees only hospitality in the gesture, but there is a certain wryness to the set of the old surgeon's mouth. Whatever he is thinking, though, he keeps it to himself. Marcus turns away to hide the blush rising hot in his cheeks, going with Esca into the other room. 

"Even in these days, there is no reason to offer a guest discourtesy," Esca says with a shrug, and Marcus nods. The blankets send up a great cloud of dust when Esca shakes them, making them both sneeze, but the mattress is thankfully sound. Between the two of them, they wrestle it over, shaking out the lumps. 

By the time the bedding has been rearranged, the bathwater is hot and there is the smell of baking bannock wafting from the kitchen. The kitchen is wonderfully warm, and Marcus cannot decide if he is more ready to be clean or to sit down to a proper meal. Cottia has decided for him, lifting a steaming kettle off the bail and sending him and Esca to the storeroom to wash away the grime of days and miles of rough travel. 

Some of the kitchen's warmth has seeped into the storeroom, and it feels unspeakably good to peel away the damp, filthy layers of his tunic and braccae. Esca makes a contented noise as he does the same. Steam wreathes Esca's face as he tips out a little of the precious hot water to soak a washrag. It is near too hot to use--Esca hisses as it scalds his fingers--but they are both long past caring. Esca's skin flushes pink as he scrubs away the grime of travel, and Marcus does not even try to pretend that he is not watching as he performs his own ablutions. 

Esca has grown whipcord lean from too long on short rations and hard work, the angles of his hipbones jutting out sharply beneath the pale skin. But he is still strong, as he has always been, and Marcus feels a great swelling rush of gratitude that they are here, like this, whole and safe. He watches the muscles sliding beneath Esca's tattoos as he moves and reaches out to touch, tracing a flowing series of spirals down the wet skin of Esca's shoulders. Esca closes his eyes, and Marcus steps into him, wrapping his fingers around Esca's hip, just holding on. 

After dinner, they are with Cottia in the stables, settling the ponies for the night, when Cub's head goes up sharply, his lips drawing back in a snarl. It is not quite dark, and Cottia climbs up onto a feed trough to peer through the high window on the pasture-facing wall.

"There are only a few of them," she says. "At least that I can see."

"Close enough for a bowshot?" Esca asks, his weapon already strung.

"Not in this light," she says.

Marcus unsheathes his gladius, going to the barn door. Esca gives him a pointed look, but Marcus ignores him. He is steady on his feet, and the day will not come while there is life in his body that he will see Cottia and Esca go into danger without his steel to guard their backs.

In the fading light, with a thin grey drizzle beginning to fall, it is hard to be sure what they are facing, but Cub paces warily at Marcus' side and does not alert to any threat other than the one in the pasture. Esca tries a few shots with his bow, and one of the spectres ambling towards them crashes into the grass but the others--four, by Marcus' count--continue on. 

It is Cottia who lands the first strike, darting in over the wet grass to thrust the narrow point of her sword up through the roof of her target's mouth before falling back into a defensive position at Esca's shoulder. Cub snarls, springing to drag another down by the throat. The slick grass is treacherous, and Marcus near loses his balance wrenching back from a strike that does not land true, the edge of his blade embedded in the corpse's collarbone. 

He hears Cottia cry out and sees the swift arc of Esca's sword as he comes to her aid. Marcus' heart leaps into his throat, but by the time his foe is down, a sluggish pool of black blood seeping from the ruin of his neck, the fight is over. 

Cottia's hands and gown are smeared with mud from where she had fallen, her sodden hair tangled down her back. She is white-faced and trembling, and Marcus curses himself for being too far away and too slow to protect her; he could not have been more useless if he had stayed in the barn and waited for the fighting to be done. 

Esca puts his arm around Cottia's shoulders, offering her back her weapon. It is almost full dark by now, and the shadows seem to crowd in on them, so that there is no thought in their minds but to regain the safety of the villa with all speed. Galarius comes to meet them at the threshold, latching the door firmly behind them.

"Any longer and I would have come out after you," he says, turning to let them pass into the atrium. Marcus leans against the wall. After six days of abuse, his lame leg is very near to letting him down, and the warning twinge of it makes his breath catch. Galarius gives him a sharp look. "You ought to let me look at that leg."

"I should go with Cottia," Marcus protests. 

"I am only going to go wash," Cottia says in a soft, worn voice. Esca still has his arm around her.

There is a flash of the old command in Galarius' voice when he says, "You have pushed yourself too hard, Marcus. Come with me now and do not be a stubborn fool."

Marcus' first instinct is still to refuse--Esca's help has always been enough--but Esca is already going with Cottia away towards the kitchen and so Marcus submits reluctantly to the old surgeon's ministrations, trying to ignore the worry gnawing in the pit of his stomach. It is not as though he would be much good to Cottia right now, or Esca either. Marcus lets the slow, stretching pain wash over him, hoping it will clear his thoughts. 

"You must rest while you can," Galarius says, letting him up at last. The muscles of his bad leg ache still, but the tightness has eased. "It will not serve you well on the road to get up to any more scenes like that."

"Thank you, sir," says Marcus, a little more stiffly than he intends. Cottia and Esca should have finished cleaning up again by now, but he has not heard them leave the kitchen. He swallows down the unreasoning panic that tries to thrust up in his breast, taking careful, measured steps through the empty atrium and into the kitchen. 

Cottia is sitting on the hearth, with her head tilted back against the wall, tears trickling down into her hair. Beside her, Esca is crouched with a bowl of warm water, murmuring in British too softly for Marcus to understand as he washes the mud and gore from her hands. Marcus wants to go to her, to say something to comfort her, but he is struck, as he had been on that night in Uncle Aquila's house, by the seeming that there is no space for him there with them. In any case, Esca is taking care of her; he kisses her temple, putting down the washrag and pulling her against his chest. 

Esca looks up at Marcus then, his eyes too bright, and Marcus cannot stay. He goes to their room because there is nowhere else and stares blindly at the ceiling, his heart aching. It would be so much easier if he could feel angry, he thinks, if he could find some fault with them. But he had been a fool to think that he could ever hold the same place in their hearts in Rome as he had done here. Of course if he is going to drag them away from their home, into a world that they despise, they are going to need each other more than they could ever want him. Cub whines, nosing at his shoulder, and Marcus rolls over to stroke his ears. 

He is half-asleep when Cottia appears in the doorway, the lamp between her hands making her eyes look huge and dark in her pointed face. Esca is behind her, his face in shadow. 

Marcus sits up, shaking his head to clear it. "Are you all right?" he asks Cottia.

Cottia nods, coming to sit by him on the bed. She has changed into a clean gown, but her hair is still tangled and Marcus can hear the hitch in her breathing that means she has been crying. She puts her hand over his, her thumb rubbing over the flawed emerald of his signet ring.

"I think, though, that you are not," she says, drawing her knees up under her skirt. Marcus freezes. He does not want to put more of a burden on her than he has already done. 

"I am fine," he says, knowing as he says it that he has hesitated too long for them to believe him. 

Esca sits down on his other side, not quite close enough to touch, but his weight dips the mattress a little, so that Marcus' body is canted towards him, drawn in like a willow withey caught in a river's current. His eyes are fixed on Marcus' face, as though he can see directly through the fragile layer of composure that Marcus has drawn tight around him, and there is nothing gentle in his gaze. 

"Unless you speak of what has gotten into your head, there is nothing anyone can do to dispel it," Esca says.

Faced directly like this, it is not in Marcus to be dissembling. "Surely I need not explain why it grieves me to have failed in my duty to you both," he says, and finds that once he has started, it is impossible to stop. "If infidelity is the result of that, I can scarcely lay any blame on Cottia or you, but it still strikes hard."

"The green earth would gape and swallow me before I broke faith with you in such a way," Esca says, and his voice is hard as flint. 

"The ways of your people are not the ways of Rome," Marcus says. "It would not be breaking faith."

"And yet it would wound you, were it done," Cottia says. "So it has not been."

"Not in deed, perhaps, but in feeling, and through my own fault."

"As well as say it is through fault with me that you love Esca so well," Cottia scoffs. "Marcus, if there is room in your heart and bed for the both of us, should there not be room for you in each of ours?" 

"It would not be right," Marcus says. "You are my wife, Cottia! Such immodesty might be overlooked here in Britain, but it will certainly not be in Rome."

"Who in Rome need know?" Cottia retorts. "Marcus, suppose that we could stay here always and you were assured of our regard for you. What then would be in your heart, if Esca and I shared what you have already with the both of us?"

Marcus swallows, thinking of them huddled together against the cold, the gentleness of Esca's hands in taking care of her, the smile that lit Cottia's face at his praise for her shooting. It is not only base lust has lit this fire. "Then it would be different. If we might live as the tribes do, then I should--I should not speak against it, if you went to Esca."

"Just because you do not speak against a thing does not mean you are content with it," Esca says. 

"I would be content," Marcus answers, realising that it is the truth. He cannot imagine a world in which his heart is not bound up in loving the both of them, and here in the face of their clear faithfulness, he wonders what moment of foolishness could ever have convinced him that there would not always be a place for him by their side, after all they have been through. 

"Then why not in Rome?" Cottia asks. "I would guard your honour with my lowered eyes and Esca with his silence. What no one knows cannot reflect badly on any of us."

Esca watches him, saying nothing, and he has softened a little, his eyes calm and reassuring. It is for Marcus to say. But no matter what his decision, the things that are tangled up between them could not be changed, even if he wished it so, and it is not in Marcus to be able to refuse them. 

"Then in Rome too, I will not speak against it," Marcus says at last. "And I shall be content."

The corners of Esca's lips lift with his slow, grave smile, and Cottia squeezes Marcus' hand. He is not sure what to expect now, looking between them uncertainly, but Esca only touches his thigh, asking if it still pains him. 

"Galarius tended to it," Marcus says. 

"And did he tell you that you have been working yourself too hard?"

"Something like that," Marcus admits. 

"Well, do you rest while we are here. Travelling by the road will be easier." 

That night, Cottia sleeps curled up between them, and Marcus presses his face into her hair, his fingers brushing Esca's where they are curled over her hip. It does not feel so different from the way things were before, and Marcus thinks that, yes, even in Rome they will find a way to be all right.


	9. Chapter 9

They stay two days there at the farm, regaining their strength and steeling themselves for the rest of the journey. Marcus tries only to be glad of the respite, but he cannot ever wholly put from his mind the knowledge that they must ride away again and that this time it will be forever. He stands in the doorway, watching the clouds sweep down over the valley, and his heart aches for the future they will never have here. 

But this brooding will only spoil the memory of the place. Marcus shakes off his melancholy and goes to find Galarius, to begin planning their arrival in Spain. 

"You will have to be careful," Galarius says. "Your inheritance will not stretch very far." Marcus finds the ache of grief for his uncle, never far from his heart, seems to strike all the more sharply here where so many of their hopes had been planted. He dutifully goes through the allotments and calculations, but neither of their hearts are in it, and soon enough Marcus lays aside his stylus and tablets. There will be time enough for this planning when they reach Regnorum, and in any case, Esca and Cottia should be there to have their say.

He goes to seek them out, finding them by the bedroom window, bent together over the tunic that Esca had torn in the fighting yesterday. Cottia's legs are drawn up under her skirt, her thigh pressed close against Esca's. She is frowning fiercely in concentration, a needle clenched between her teeth.

"Best just to tear it for rags," she says. "I will only mangle it."

Esca snorts. "A few months of wild living and you have forgotten how to patch a tunic?"

"You do it then!" Cottia laughs, spitting out the needle and offering it to him. "Surely you and Marcus had torn tunics to mend, in your adventures."

"Surely," Marcus agrees from the doorway. "And I mended them all myself. It comes to me that most of the tunics that saw mending here on the farm were my doing too." For a heartbeat, he hesitates, unsure if he has come blundering in where he should not, but Cottia grins at him, nudging Esca over to make room on the end of the couch.

"Do you come here and mend this one as well," she says. "Or Esca shall have no clothes to wear, soon enough." She gives Esca an amused look out of the corner of her eye, and Marcus feels his cheeks burning. He wonders if they had touched before he came in, imagines Esca's rough hands spanning Cottia's hips, his tongue tracing the dusting of freckles above the swell of her breasts. His mouth goes dry, and he tries to focus on the mending in his hands, to keep his thoughts from straying where they should not. What they do is between them, and not for Marcus to concern himself with, so long as they are happy. 

He swallows, and his voice sounds normal enough when he asks Cottia, "Shall I try again to teach you how to do it?" 

"It will do no good," Cottia says, shaking her head firmly. "You have come to the wrong place for a wife who will keep clothes on your back." 

"Just as well then that I am content to have a wife who can break a horse and shoot a man dead at fifty paces," Marcus says, kissing her on the cheek. "But perhaps that last one might be better kept between ourselves when we get to Spain." Esca laughs.

There is no doubt that this is strange, but Marcus is happy, as happy as he has been since last they were here. For the first time, he lets himself imagine another little red-roofed villa, nestled in a sun-drenched Spanish valley, with ponies out to pasture and perhaps a terraced slope for vines. He imagines moments like this, when they have stopped being shocking and become routine, the air easy and clear between them. The needle flashes in and out of the ragged cloth, and beside him Cottia smiles, a small private smile, as though she too is seeing something other than than the thin, grey rain in the valley, and finds her heart the lighter for it. 

But for all its beauty, that place is still only a fantasy, and the thought of it does nothing to soften the blow when at last they must ride away from their home. Cottia clenches her jaw against the tears that threaten, and Marcus does not try to comfort her with empty words. It will only be time that eases the pain in their hearts. Still, when he comes upon Esca staring blindly at the little kitchen altar, Marcus opens his arms to him, and Esca does not pull away. 

When they can linger no longer, Esca straightens the offerings one final time, and follows Marcus over the threshold. The sun has come out, hinting at the spring that they will not be here to welcome, and the ponies, well-rested, prance and arch their necks, as though they at least are eager to see new horizons. 

"If the weather stays clear, we should be at the city gates in three days," Galarius says. The yard has been empty all morning, and Marcus prays that they will find the road deserted. Three days. 

They can endure three more days. 

To ask for good weather and a deserted road together seems to have been presuming a step too far. There are never more than a handful of the spectres, but it seems to Marcus that they rarely ride for more than two hours without encountering more of them. They must be constantly on their guard, and by the time they make camp on that first day, his nerves are beginning to fray anew under the strain. They do not dare to light a fire, for fear of what might be drawn by it, and it is a cold and miserable night. 

The clear weather breaks the third day, and Marcus wonders if the gods have any sense of justice at all, for even in the rain there is no respite from the fighting. He tries not to think such thoughts too loudly. And perhaps they are more just than he credits, for as the icy rain truly begins to pour down, they crest the rise and see a well-trodden track, like the one that leads to their own door, winding down the valley.

"There will be shelter at the end of that," Esca says through chattering teeth. 

It is early to stop, but Marcus' fingers are numb on Clara's reins and he can see Cottia's shoulders trembling. 

"We will ride up to the city in the morning," he says, kicking Clara on. 

The shelter they find proves to be a villa, larger than their own, and perhaps more sumptuously appointed, once, but it has since fallen prey to looters and other rabble. Someone has smashed up a fine wooden cabinet for firewood, leaving half of it splintered across the atrium floor, and ransacked the kitchen and storage shelves. Still, it is a roof and a hearth, and to Marcus, pathetically tired and shivering, that seems like more than enough. 

There had been no sign of any spectres when they rode up and the stables had been empty, though in a sad state, but there are many doors to a home like this. Cub has been hackling and growling since they entered, and Esca goes to check the _peristylium_ and back rooms while Cottia kindles a fire.

A shiver trickles down Marcus' spine, quite apart from the chill, and his head goes up, a heartbeat before Esca shouts, "Marcus! To me!" 

He is backing down the colonnade before a shambling advance of spectres, a handful of them children, standing only as high as his waist. Travellers, perhaps, sheltering here as they have done. Esca stumbles over the threshold to the atrium, losing his balance and listing hard against the wall. The first of the children reaches out, the ruins of his jaw gaping wide, and there is not room for Marcus to swing his gladius. The angle is bad for a stab through the temple, and the weight of the body as it falls nearly wrenches the blade from his numb hands. But it gives Esca the time to find his footing, and standing shoulder to shoulder they dispatch the rest of the spectres as they spill into the atrium. 

"There is a door ajar, out into the garden," Esca says. Cottia follows as they scout the rest of the house, latching the door firmly and checking to be sure there is no danger lurking in the other _cubicula_. 

After the security of Uncle Aquila's house and their own tiny villa, this place seems looming and dangerous. Marcus cannot shake the sense of unease brooding behind his thoughts, but certainly this is better than the wide-open countryside. In any event, the down-stuffed mattress in the room they choose goes a good way towards making him feel better about the place. Cottia sprawls spread-eagle onto it, grinning.

"We shall have to get a bed like this in Spain," she says. "I would find it much easier to pretend to be a proper Roman matron if I were sleeping in such a bed."

Marcus knows she is teasing, but he makes a private promise that just such a mattress will be the first thing they buy when they have spare coin. His sleep is restless, but at any rate, after a night on a soft bed, with a fire in the brazier, he feels much more human in the morning. The sun has come out, though it looks like it will be raining again before noon, and the road before them looks clear enough. With any luck, they will make it to the city with dry skins.

The ride is uneventful, and Marcus wonders if it is a sign of progress, that their foes' numbers are thinning as they draw closer under the shadow of the Eagles. _Mithras, let them be pushed back._ But there is an uneasy itch between his shoulders, and he sees Esca's eyes roving all over the countryside, as though in anticipation of an attack. Cottia, too, is sitting stiff and wary. 

It is only that they have been so long alone, Marcus thinks. It will be strange to be in a full city again, thronging with people. But they will be on their way to the continent soon enough, and he imagines there will be plenty of room in Spain, that they will not have to contend with too many straight walls or crowded streets. He hopes that the crossing will not be too unpleasant.

There is no sign of life under the grey city walls; only the aimless, drifting motion of spectres wearing their fingers to the bone clawing at the implacable bricks. For a moment, Marcus checks, but of course there would be no one fool enough to set out without armed protection. The legion's banner is flying still from the watchtower. 

Cub's ears have pricked forward, and he is growling softly in his throat. "He will not like riding down against them," Esca says. His brow is creased with an uneasy frown. "I do not like it myself. What if they do not open the gates?"

Marcus rubs at the back of his neck. There will be no guarantees there, and it is a risk he is loathe to take. 

"It may be that if we ride down to the harbour, we will be better suited to gain entrance," Galarius says. "Surely there is more coming and going there. For myself, that seems the most sensible plan." 

Marcus shares a covert glance with Cottia and Esca. They can hardly abandon him to go on his own, and there is no better recourse available to them.

"To the harbour it is then," Esca says softly. 

The only afflicted among the terraces and fields of the little farms lying out beyond the city walls are those who cannot drag themselves closer to the living city, their useless limbs stirring against the cold turf. They moan and gnash their teeth as the small company rides by, and Marcus shudders hard, trying to block them from his mind. 

As they draw closer to the harbour side, Marcus expects for the danger to grow thicker, but no direct attack comes and the uneasy coldness between his shoulders grows ever worse as they near the harbour. This side of the city as devoid of life as the main gate, and it seems a small blessing that there are no spectres lurking on the riverbank between the city walls and the harbour. There are boats moored at the docks, but no sign of life aboard them. 

"What now?" Cottia breathes. She and Esca have drawn their bows, their eyes scanning the surrounding gardens and roadways. Beside Marcus, Cub sidles uneasily, his teeth bared. 

There is no time for hesitation; their heartbeats will be drawing danger in from all quarters, and to linger will mean being caught between the river and the ravening horde, with no guarantee of any gate to be opened to save them. 

Without warning, Galarius kicks his mount towards the west postern gate, pounding fiercely on the solid wood. "Open, in Caesar's name!" Marcus flinches back from the bull-bellow of his voice in the silence, bracing for the onslaught that will surely follow it. And there is no answer, not even a shouted refusal. 

Doubt rears up ugly in the back of Marcus' mind, but no, it cannot be that there is no one to answer it--the Eagles would have held the city down to the last man, until there were none left to take up arms. It cannot be.

"Marcus, we will be trapped here if we do not ride," Esca says urgently, and Marcus hears the twang and hiss of his bow, and Cottia's behind it. "We can try to return to learn more, but now we must _go_." 

His voice cuts through the beating winged panic rising up in Marcus' mind, and he kicks Clara on, close on Melys' heels, with Galarius a little ways behind. For a moment, it seems as though they will win through, riding over the scattered bodies fallen with Cottia and Esca's arrows through their skulls, but then a great, staggering wave of spectres emerges out of the copse. There is nowhere to go.

Marcus' heart is pounding, and he catches Esca's eye. If they are to make an end here, then it shall be a good one, shoulder to shoulder. Cottia has laid aside her bow, her face alight with a terrible, hopeless pride. She, too, will make a good end.

_Mithras, light of the sun, do not let our spirits be trapped here in this place. Let us walk into the afterlife and not linger when our bodies rise again._

It is the last thing Marcus expects, steeling himself to meet this final battle, to hear Galarius' voice raised up in defiance, shouting, "Caesar! Caesar!" as he kicks his mount forward as though to meet the tide single-handed. The horde's flank thins a little, the ranks stumbling and pushing against one another in an effort to reach this new temptation, their witless attention diverted. 

"Go!" Galarius orders. Marcus stares at him, aghast. But Esca lays the flat of his sword across Clara's rump, and she leaps into action, flying across the littered roadway, with Melys and Bricca scarce a heartbeat behind, foam flying from their mouths in their terror. Clara rears when she meets the wave-break of dead bodies, and it is that, Marcus thinks later, which saves them. Those spectres nearest are sent scattering by her flailing hooves, and with Esca and Cottia falling instinctively into an arrowhead formation behind him, they somehow manage to cut their way through.

From the corner of his eye, Marcus sees a streak of grey fur and white teeth as Cub drags down a body on Esca's flank, but in the next heartbeat they have swept past, and Marcus loses sight of him. 

There is no time to hesitate, no time to look back, for now that they are moving, their hearts pounding, those spectres near that are still standing have set their sights on them. Esca pulls into the lead, and Marcus, his mind a great, terrifying blank, knows only to follow him as they leave Regnorum--and Galarius--behind. Faintly, on the still air, the cry of "Caesar!" follows them. Even when they are out of sight of the city walls, the distance between the little farms growing wider and wider, Esca does not slow, pushing both ponies and riders to their absolute limit.

It is only when they have swept wide round the shores of a small lake that Esca's furious pace begins to slacken. There is blood on his face, Marcus sees, and all over his braccae. He prays it is someone else's. It is only when he looks round at Cottia that he realises Cub had never caught up with them again. Somehow, that seems to strike his heart harder than Galarius' sacrifice, even than the fall of Regnorum. Indeed, so great is the cloud of grief bearing down on him that it is only that small, cutting pain that he feels for the loss of his wolf that seems real. 

"The ponies cannot go much further today," Cottia says. "Esca, we must rest, and pray we have done enough to shake them from our trail." She casts a worried glance at Marcus, and it is only then that he realises there are silent tears streaming down his face. He scrubs them away on his cloak.

"We need shelter," Esca says. "It will be raining again, and none of us can afford to take ill now."

Marcus, lost in the fog of his grief, is content to follow where they will lead. 

Esca cuts back as near to the road as he dares, hoping to find an abandoned villa or byre to shelter in, but the rain comes down before they have any luck. They are shivering and miserable by the time they come across the modest little farmhouse tucked into the lee of a hill.

"Praise be to the Horned One," Cottia whispers. 

The floor is of hard-packed earth and the thatch leaks a little, but when Esca tests the door and shutters, they are sound.

"We will be safe enough for tonight at least," he says, and goes to walk the exhausted ponies before settling them into the little sloping lean-to built against the far wall. 

Marcus' hands are trembling so badly with the flint and steel that Cottia takes it from him.   
"Here, I will do it." 

He catches her wrist, running his thumb over the delicate skin inside her forearm. "Wait," he says. "Cottia, let me see that you are all right." 

"I am," Cottia says, but immediately offers her hands to him nonetheless. Her arms and gown are spattered with mud and worse, but Marcus' questing fingertips find no injury. She kicks off her filthy braccae, showing the long, pale stretch of her legs unscathed. 

"Thank you," Marcus breathes, to Mithras or Minerva or any other gods who might be listening. 

"And you," she says. "You are not hurt?" 

Marcus shakes his head. "I do not think so." His leg is throbbing, and his hands ache from the cold, but there is no other pain. Cottia unpins his cloak, her fingers icy on his skin. She lingers for a moment after she has done, squeezing his hands tight, before she turns back to kindling the fire.

The noise of the rain on the roof intensifies for a few seconds, like a shower of pebbles, the leak in the thatch thickening to a little stream. Marcus thinks of Esca outside, of the blood on his face, and wishes that he had gone with him to stable the ponies. 

When the door creaks open, Marcus flings his head up in alarm. But it is only Esca, drenched and shivering, letting in an icy burst of wind with him. 

"Be easy," Cottia says, crossing the floor to take the bucket of well-water Esca has brought back. She fills a pot to warm in the embers of the fire for washing, stray droplets sizzling and hissing in the flames. The latch clicks reassuringly behind Esca, and he crouches on his heels by the fire, stripping off his sodden clothes, spreading the tunic out to dry on the hearthstones. The braccae he gives up for lost.

"It was not your blood?" Marcus asks.

Esca looks at him, startled. "No," he says after a moment. "No, I am well."

Marcus' eyes blur with tears, and he turns his face away, as though to keep Esca from seeing. He stares into the flickering ribbons of the fire as Cottia sheds her dripping clothes, reaching for the pot of water steaming gently on the hearth. Esca tends to her, running his fingers over her arms and legs as he scrubs away the mud and gore from their journey. From the corner of his eye, Marcus sees Esca tilt up her chin and kiss her, hears him make a soft noise like a sob of relief, but his attention seems to flicker over it, back to the leaping pattern of the flames. 

"Marcus." It does not sound like the first time Cottia has tried to get his attention. Marcus forces himself to look at her. "Come and wash up," she says. "You will feel better for it." 

He obediently takes the hot cloth she offers him, scarcely feeling it against his skin. It is warm here, by the fire, but his entire body is trembling, like a spooked horse. Cottia kneels behind him, running another cloth across his back.

"I am so sorry," she murmurs, kissing his shoulder.

"It may be that the Eagles hold Dubris still," Marcus says hoarsely. "We do not know."

"Do not think of that now," Esca says.

"What then should I think of?" Marcus demands, and he scarce recognises his own voice. "Shall I think of Galarius? Or my Uncle? Shall I think of the hundreds of soldiers who fought to hold Regnorum?"

"No, Marcus, I meant only--"

But Marcus cuts him off. "I know what you meant! That in all likelihood the Eagles have flown from Britain for good, and with them any hope of our future." He is shouting, and his chest aches as though he will die of it, split open with his fear and grief. Speaking the thought aloud lends it a terrible finality, and in his heart of hearts he is certain that it is true, that whatever is left of Rome in Britain is as scattered and ruined as he finds himself now.

"We are far from lost yet," Cottia says. She comes to sit on her heels before him, taking his hands in hers, searching for something else to say. But it is Esca who speaks.

"Six years ago, it seemed very likely to me that there could be no future worth hoping for," he says, clasping Marcus' hands, with Cottia's between them. "But there was new life that came out of the ashes of the old, a good life, and it is in my heart that it might happen again, in time."

"That was not the same," Marcus says. 

"No," Esca agrees. "It was not. For we are with you still."

"Forgive me," Marcus says, stricken at his careless words. "I was not thinking."

"Men have said worse things in their grief," Esca says kindly, and tilts Marcus' head up to kiss him. 

Even if Marcus had not lived a year in an army barracks, he has certainly had ample occasion of late to understand how the aftershocks of battle might affect a man's desires, even in spite of his grieving. There is no shame in the way his breath comes faster at Esca's touch, warmth sparking in his belly against the lowering cloud of grief, but Cottia's hands are still in his, her eyes fixed on them, and Marcus cannot bring himself to pull away from her.

"Esca, I cannot--"

"You can," Cottia says. She is not so gentle as Esca had been, offering not comfort but the promise of her own fierce strength, unbending, for Marcus to follow.

Esca reaches to twine his fingers in Cottia's hair, and the firelight flickering over the inked patterns on his shoulders and breast plays tricks on Marcus' tired eyes, so that the lines of the tattoos seem to shift and furl like living things. Cottia leans into Esca's hand, and he kisses her, pulling her head back to mouth down the line of her throat. Marcus can see the pulse fluttering there under her jaw when Esca pulls away, can hear her breath panting in the quiet space between them. 

"It is all right," Esca says to him, kissing his palm. "Marcus, it will be all right." And Marcus does not know whether he is talking about the future or everything that is tangled up between them, but he gives in just the same, folding himself into the space between the two of them, where he fits seamlessly. 

In the bedplace, Cottia opens the folds of her shift, the tight points of her nipples brushing Marcus' chest when she leans down to kiss him, her hair spilling over their faces. Esca catches it up in his hands, his lips on the back of her neck, and when he lifts his head, the familiar planes of his face look otherworldly, his eyes open and unseeing as he moves with her over Marcus. 

It is impossible to wholly lay aside his grief, but as Marcus lets himself yield to them, to Cottia's sweet, open kisses and the sure touch of Esca's hands, he finds that the ache strikes a little less sharply, and he can breathe around it, giving himself over to memorising the small, secret details that Cottia and Esca offer up for him. 

A bead of sweat rolls down between the gentle swell of Cottia's breasts, and Marcus pushes up onto his elbow, bearing her down into the mattress, his hand curved round her shoulder, and she groans when he suckles her. Esca kneels between her legs, kissing the inside of her knee, and Marcus' throat tightens as he watches Esca's hands moving over her skin. She parts her legs wider for him, sighing when he works his fingers inside her, and Marcus trails kisses down her belly, feeling her body wracked with tremors beneath his lips. 

When she comes, she sobs Esca's name, and nothing in the world could have prepared Marcus for the rush of emotion that shoots through his veins at his wife's coming undone at Esca's hands. She reaches for Marcus, urging him up to kiss her as Esca pulls away. His hands are hot against Marcus' skin, kneading at the muscles tight behind his shoulders until Marcus goes limp and pliant beneath his touch, rolling over to sink down into the mattress. Cottia's kisses stray down his throat, and Marcus tilts his head back in surrender. 

" _Cottia_ ," Esca breathes. "Oh, Marcus." There is a look on his face of awe near unto pain, like a man seeing some sacred mystery, and the realisation that it is because of _them_ makes it somehow more than Marcus can bear to see. Instead, he closes his eyes and reaches up a trembling hand to touch Esca, sweeping his thumb over the bow of Esca's lips, his fingers smoothing over Esca's cheekbone. 

He feels Esca smile, and opens his eyes. Cottia takes his hand, pulling it away so that she can stretch up to kiss Esca, and even as Esca bends to meet her, his hand is sliding down Marcus' body, his palm smoothing over Marcus' cock. Marcus' eyes flutter closed again, and the world in its ruin seems to fall away at last, leaving only these things that Marcus had not known he wanted and would never have hoped to have, shaped out of the darkness.

He tries to be quiet, his hands fisting in the sheets, but Cottia bites his lip and says, "I want to hear you." So Marcus gasps and whines into her mouth as Esca's rhythm quickens, and she smiles, reaching down to pull Esca closer, so that the blunt pressure of his arousal nudges at Marcus' hip. Cottia runs her thumb along his length, and he whimpers, grinding against Marcus. Esca presses wet kisses over the scar along Marcus' shoulder, trailing down to scrape his teeth over Marcus' nipple, and Marcus cries out, arching into Esca's fist.

Cottia sits up onto her heels, perfectly open as she watches them move together, so close now; Marcus feels her gaze as hot as forge-fire sweeping over them. 

" _Oh,_ " she whispers, when Esca makes a wrenching, almost pained noise and goes perfectly still, spilling over Marcus' hip. Cottia puts her hand on Marcus' belly and then over Esca's hand, her thumb sliding along the slit of Marcus' cock with each unsteady stroke, until he shudders, his toes curling against the sheets as he comes. 

Awareness comes back in slow, muted pieces. First, there is nothing but soft warmth suffusing Marcus' every limb, and then beneath it the heaviness of utmost exhaustion. He feels Esca's lips against his shoulder, shaping words that Marcus cannot fathom, and Cottia's hand splayed across his chest. His lame leg is aching, but only a little. 

It begins to come to Marcus that this can only be a temporary reprieve, the peace they have wrought too fragile to last for long, but that thought seems slippery and far away. There are other things that have been wrought that will last, and the bright joy that unfurls in Marcus' chest when he thinks of them seems as though it will never fade or lessen. It is easy, sheltered safe between them, to think only of that.

Cottia slips out of the bedplace to stoke the fire and brings back with her a damp cloth. Marcus, half-asleep, makes a grateful noise, and the last sensations he knows before the darkness rolls over him are the soft press of Cottia's lips on his forehead, followed by the tickle of her hair on his cheek as she leans over him to kiss Esca. 

At first, Marcus is not sure what wakes him; he had been that deeply asleep. But Cottia is awake too, her body tense beneath the blankets, and Esca sits up, his senses straining into the darkness. There is a low scratching on the door, followed by a mournful, whimpering howl, and whatever else it might be, it is the noise of a living thing.

Marcus does not dare speak aloud the flickering hope that springs to life beneath his breastbone, but he climbs out of bed, his sword upraised in his fist. He hears Esca's quiet footsteps follow him to the door.

At first, there does not seem to be anything there, and Marcus opens the door the tiniest bit wider. There is a joyful yipping sound, and a flash of green eyes glowing in the cracked doorway, a lolling tongue.

Marcus flings the door open, his sword clattering to the floor. "Cub!" The young wolf's fur is filthy and matted, but Marcus cares not at all, staggering back under the desperate onslaught of affection. He sinks to his knees, letting Cub lick all over his face and draping his arm over the broad grey shoulders, his heart swelling fit to burst with joy. "I should have known better than to give up on you, brother," he says, and he drags his hand quickly across his face. 

Convinced at last that his man is well and safe, Cub trots over to give Esca a friendly lick as well, grinning up into his face as Esca scratches behind the wolf's pricked ears. Cottia too receives a wet kiss of greeting, and then Cub is back to Marcus, sprawling possessively across his lap, his tail thumping against the dirt floor. 

"You must let me up," Marcus says after a while, when his feet have begun to lose feeling from Cub's weight pressed across his legs. Cub looks at him mournfully, but he slinks away to curl up at the foot of the mattress. The first flush of joy at their reunion stays glowing warm in Marcus' breast until he drops back again to sleep.


	10. Chapter 10

When Marcus wakes a second time, to the bright light of dawn streaming in through the cracks in the shutters, he turns his face into Cottia's hair, feeling flooded with relief and contentment as one who has had an evil dream in the night, but awakes to find himself safe in his own bed.  


Against his back, Esca stirs, his hand sliding over Marcus' thigh. Marcus' blood stirs, eager for Esca's touch, but quick behind his arousal the memories that had been hidden just away from his awareness by the lingering fog of sleep begin to creep back; his Uncle, Galarius, and the empty, hopeless walls of Regnorum. 

The weight of it seems too much, his breath coming short, and he does not realise he has made a noise until Esca says, "Marcus? Are you all right?" touching the back of Marcus' neck.

Marcus should lie, should pretend that he is fine, for surely he had heaped enough shame on himself the night before. But he scrubs his hands over his face, his breathing wet and heavy with renewed grief and tears barely held at bay. 

"I cannot seem to get my feet under me again," he says at last. "When we had a plan, there was at least something to strive for. But. Well, the future now looks very bleak." 

"We will make another plan," Esca says, pulling him close. "Surely the gods are smiling on us, if we have made it this far." 

They are comforting words, but the grief in Marcus' heart is such that it must be spent before any comfort, no matter how well-spoken, will take root. Esca strokes his back and makes soothing noises as Marcus convulses silently against his breast. His tears have begun to run dry when Cottia wakes. She kisses his hair and waits quietly for his breathing to steady.

By the time he is done, Marcus is exhausted, feeling hollowed-out and fragile. But he can begin now to face what must be done, as he should have from the first. 

"That will not happen again," he says, sitting up. "Forgive me."

"There is nothing to forgive," Cottia says. "Whatever notions are in your mind of weakness, they do not hold here between us."

Marcus looks away and tries to rise, but Esca reaches out and catches his wrist.

"You would do a disservice to those you are mourning to find shame in your grief," he says, and Marcus flinches back as from a blow, but there is only kindness to be seen in Esca's face, and in Cottia's. 

"We should eat, and begin to plan a course of action," Marcus says, for he does not begin to know how to thank them. 

"Our first concern must be finding more food," Cottia says, portioning out breakfast from their dwindling supply of dried meat and buccellum. "This will not last long, whatever we decide."

It is an important concern, but not foremost in Marcus' mind. There will be game--Cub's return will prove a sure blessing there--and if they are lucky, houses along the road whose stores have not been entirely depleted. No, it is the question of where they are going that must needs be answered. 

"My people would take us in," Cottia says to that. "Even if we could not find my mother and her new husband, I know they would."

"Why should we believe they have fared any better than Calleva or Regnorum?" Marcus asks. "I do not say it to be cruel, Cottia, but we must have cause before we go haring off across the country."

She nods tightly. 

"A people of hunters and warriors who make their own way may well survive better than a walled city of citizens depending on the grain dole," Esca says. "We have not seen their walls do them much good thus far."

Marcus can scarcely credit that the scattered native duns with no more in the way of fortification than their wattle and daub roundhouses and earthworks could do what Rome's legions could not and survive this scourge. But Esca is right that it is where the walled cities stand that the danger seems to run thickest.

"The Iceni then are not all like the Atrebates," Marcus asks, "and taken to Roman ways?"

"They are not," Cottia says proudly. "Not even after Rome tried to make them so, after Boudicca fell. Some, around Venta Icenorum, but not all. There were no straight walls and stone watchtowers where I grew up."

Marcus thinks of Isca Dumnoniorum, a lifetime and more ago it seems, and of a cluster of roundhouses standing in the lee of a Roman fort, of a brown babe who might have grown up to live a life very like the one Cottia had known, if things had gone differently, and of a man who had still carried his father's father's war spears into battle. Yes, he thinks, if things had been different, Cradoc's family might well have come safely through this, if fortune had smiled on them. He thinks also of that long-ago Druid and wonders if Cottia and Esca still think sometimes, in their private hearts, that this is a curse visited on Rome by Britain's native gods. It is not a question he dares to ask. But there is another, brought on the heels of that thought, that he cannot avoid.

"You do not think that they will turn away a Roman face, these tribesmen who did not take to Rome's ways?"

"You are not like the other Romans," Cottia says staunchly.

She does not mean it to sting, but still it does. "Perhaps not," Marcus says, trying not to let it show. "But my face bears it out well enough."

"Less so, with your hair getting so long," Esca says. "I do not think it risk enough to change our plan."

And so it is decided. As they prepare to set out, Marcus wonders if there are any other soldiers like himself, scattered around the ruined isle, sending up their prayers to Mithras for the success of their last, desperate plans. He wonders if the god of the legions will hear them at all. But he makes his prayers anyway because he does not know what else to do.

The morning is fine and almost warm when they set out; spring is not so far away. Marcus listens to the drip of rainwater from the bare trees, and tries not to wonder where they will find themselves when the new leaves have begun to unfurl. There is no profit in such thoughts. Esca and Cottia have reckoned the journey will take at least ten days, avoiding the Roman road and taking care with the ponies, but there is no speaking to how long it will take to find people, if indeed they are there to be found.

Their shelter that night is a pile of pine boughs, but they go to it with full bellies, for as the afternoon is waning, Cub charges off without warning on the hunting trail, running down a rather thin and meagre roe deer for Esca's spear. But half-starved and exhausted as they are, it seems a fine prize indeed.

Marcus takes the first watch, with Cub curled up at his feet. In the quiet and still, there is nothing to keep his thoughts from turning where they should not, to the still-raw edges of his grief, like a man who has been told he must not think about crocodiles and then finds he cannot turn his mind to anything else. He prays for Galarius' soul, and promises that he will make a sacrifice on his behalf as soon as he is able, if Mithras will bring him peace in the afterlife, though his body has had none. There is nothing in Marcus' power to do for the other unknown hundreds who fell defending Regnorum, but he prays for them all the same. 

_Surely the gods are smiling on us,_ Esca had said. It is too dark for him to see Esca's face, but he can hear him breathing, snoring a little. If Esca had said such a thing before Regnorum, Marcus would have thought him blaspheming. But now, Marcus cannot but wonder if it is true, if perhaps Lugh of the Shining Spear has been holding his hand over Cottia and Esca, for some purpose Marcus cannot fathom. Perhaps it is only because they have taken him into their hearts that he is yet breathing, spared by a god more merciful than those of Rome. 

Cottia whimpers in her sleep, and Marcus shakes his head to clear it. Such things are not for him to know.

Ten days, Esca had said, but to Marcus it seems they have been travelling forever, an eternity of cold and rain and exhaustion, broken only by the occasional necessity of crossing the Roman road. 

"We would be passing through Venta Icenorum soon, were we travelling by the road," Esca says one day; Marcus thinks it is the seventh or eighth since they left Regnorum, but he cannot be sure. His voice sounds strange, for there is little reason for them to be talking much, and it has been more than a day since Marcus last heard either of them string more than four words together. 

"Then it is four or five days ride to the village where I grew up," Cottia says. "I will be able to tell you the way, soon." It has been more than six years since she rode these plains, but Marcus supposes if he were miraculously dropped back down in the middle of the Etruscan hills where he spent his first ten years, then he would have no trouble at all finding his way back to the old farm. He breathes carefully around the ache that thought still brings to his chest.

The mist rolling in thick from the sea makes them shiver, beading in Cottia's hair and turning Esca, riding only a few spear casts ahead of Marcus, into a faint and ethereal figure, as though at any moment he might ride through some unknown doorway in the mist and be lost to them forever. Such thoughts are foolishness, the stuff of stories for frightening children, but Marcus is uneasy nonetheless. He sets his heels to Clara's sides, closing the gap between them. 

They shelter that night in a villa that is so overgrown that Marcus wonders whether it might not have been abandoned before ever the dead of Venta Icenorum began to rise up. The air feels thick and heavy with old memories. Cottia sings some lilting, half-heard tune under her breath as she lays the fire, and it seems to Marcus that the air clears a little, despite the smoke stinging his eyes. He thinks it perhaps better not to speak of it. 

The firelight does not seem to reach all the way into the shadowed corners and high ceiling of the room, and around the house the wind off of the sea is noisy and unsettled beneath the eaves, rattling the old shutters. If they had wandered through the mist into another realm, Marcus wonders if they would know it. He is not sure that such a fate would be so terrible. 

But he does not think the washing water would feel so wet, nor the heat of the fire so warm, if they had done. The lines framing Esca's mouth are as sharply graven as ever, and surely there could be nothing so bright as Cottia's hair, in a world beyond the mist. He dreams that night of _home_ , but it is not the little farm on the Downs, nor the villa in the Etruscan hills. When Marcus wakes, the last fading remnants of the dream slip like water through his mind; the smell of bread baking and a group of hunting spears stacked in the corner, and though he cannot remember the rest, it leaves a hollow ache in his belly for the loss of it. 

Esca makes a sleepy, questioning noise when Marcus leans into his chest, seeking comfort in the steady pounding of Esca's heart beneath his cheek. 

"It is nothing," Marcus says. But Esca comes fully awake anyway, and perhaps there is a shadow upon him of half-remembered dreams as well, for when Marcus turns his head a little and presses a kiss to the perfect, flat oval of his nipple, Esca exhales hard and reaches down to wrap his fingers round Marcus' hip, pulling him close. 

Warm and slow with sleep, Esca seems in no hurry. The low, hoarse noises he makes pull Cottia from her sleep, and she does not seem at all surprised, sliding her leg over Marcus' hip as though they have done this a hundred times before, as comfortable taking her place in this as she is on horseback, perfectly assured. And it seems to Marcus absurd that this could ever have been any other way between them. Even if they had stayed on the farm, living out their days in peace, terracing the southern slope for vines and building wings onto the little villa for the children who would have come in time, there would still have been this slow, inevitable slide into one another. 

It fills Marcus with a great sense of peace. Even here at the end of all things, they have lived out the story that was written for their hearts, and if it ends tomorrow, it will still have been good in the telling. Cottia sinks down onto his chest, her breath panting over the line of his collar bone, and Marcus fumbles for Esca's hand, so that they are tangled up together as they fall back into sleep.

The wind off of the ocean is cold, when they pause atop the headland, staring out at the white-capped waves and the little stilt-legged birds racing over the low-tide flats, but that does nothing to disguise that it is very nearly spring. They are two days north of the abandoned villa, and aside from a flock of sheep with no shepherd in evidence, they have seen no other living thing save the deer and birds disturbed by their passage. Of the undead, there have been similarly few encounters, though Marcus knows better than to let his guard slip. 

"It is in my heart to go north," Esca says. "If we do not find people soon." He squints into the sunlight beginning to slant down towards afternoon's end. They will need to ride inland before long, unless they want to sleep in the cold chill off of the water. 

"North of the wall?" Cottia asks, looking at Marcus from the corner of her eye. 

"No," says Esca. "No, I think that their memories in Caledonia are long enough that even if it were safe, we would find no welcome from those many people who heard tell of a Greek healer of sore eyes and his spear-bearer who was fool enough to flaunt his name to all and sundry." He makes a thoughtful noise. "North to Brigantes territory, or perhaps west, to where the blue-sailed ships dock from Ériu."

"I would not stake much on their coming now," Marcus says. 

"No," Esca agrees. "But they may again, some day." 

At some point on this long ride north, they have begun to hope again. Not for Spain, not yet, for it is still too soon for Marcus' heart to venture that far, but there were British ships trading across the water to Rome before ever Caesar's legions came, and it may be that those days will come again, even if Rome herself does not. 

Cub flings up his head, his ears pricked. In the next breath, Cottia and Esca have strung their bows, their eyes scanning the strip of land between the forest and the shore. Marcus sees movement in the trees, and Cub takes a few steps away from his side. He is not growling, and Marcus finds himself daring to hope for just a little more. 

"Hold, Cub," he says.

Beside him, Cottia takes a sharp indrawn breath and out of the woods come four men on sturdy little ponies, sleek, black beauties, as fine as any Marcus has ever seen. They have bright-collared war spears trained on the three strangers on the headland, but Cottia and Esca make a show of letting their bowstrings go slack, and Marcus takes his hand away from the hilt of his sword. 

"Who are you?" The tribesman's speech has the same soft burr as Cottia's, but it is a shock, after so many days alone, to hear another person speaking. 

"Esca, son of Cunoval, bearer of the blue warshield of the Brigantes, and my spear-bearer, Marcus," says Esca. They had agreed it best that Marcus not call too much attention to himself, at least at first. Esca had assured him that his given name was close enough to a British one to attract little attention, at least if Esca or Cottia spoke it. "And Cottia, daughter of Melitanis of the Iceni." 

The man who had spoken turns his eyes to Cottia, watching her for a long moment. She stares back, with her chin thrown out in the warrior-stance that is so familiar to Marcus. 

"How is that you come to have a Roman for your spear-bearer?" says one of the other men, and Marcus feels their gazes sharpen on him.

"Because he is my husband!" Cottia flares, before Esca can answer. 

Marcus holds up his hands peaceably. "Do you say there are none among your people who have the stamp of Rome on their features?" he asks, a little of the old arrogance creeping into his voice. He knows very well that they cannot say that, even in these days. 

"Perhaps not," says the first man. His fine flowing mustache twitches with a quirk of what Marcus might almost think is amusement. "You all have whole skins, between you?" 

"Of course," says Esca. "And have had no trouble cross our path for three days or more, I give you my word of honour." 

The tribesman makes a grumbling noise, putting Marcus very much in mind of his Uncle, and considers them. Marcus is beginning to grow impatient. 

"Is that a full-blood wolf?" A boy's voice, coming from the gangling lad of no more than fourteen riding at the back of the party. His companion cuffs him round the ear, but the boy rides up anyway, to get a better look at Cub.

"Aye," says Marcus. "It was Esca found him and trained him from a cub." 

The boy gives Esca a round-eyed look, and Marcus thanks him silently for speaking out of turn, for the next words the tribesman speaks are, "My name is Avitorix. Do you come back to the dun and eat of our salt, if you do not mind the boy's impertinence."

The man who had named Marcus for a Roman makes a soft noise of derision, and Cottia glares at him, but Esca pays it no heed.

"We do not mind," he says to Avitorix with a small smile, "and we are grateful for your hospitality." 

When they emerge from the cool shadows of the forest, the sun has sunk down into a brilliant bloom of light, outlining the trees on the horizon in perfect black detail and pouring golden over the earthworks of the dun that has appeared quite suddenly before them. The smell of hearthfire wafts warm to meet them, and Marcus hears the lowing of cattle being driven to the yard for the night. 

Beside him, Cottia's face is shining with breathless, eager hope beneath the sunlit flame of her hair. For a moment, the lines of Esca's face are lit in hard, bright lines, like a bronze mask, but then he catches Marcus' eye and smiles his slow, grave smile. 

As they ride down into the village, Marcus offers up a prayer of thanksgiving, to Mithras and then to Lugh of the Shining Spear. Whatever awaits them when the sun rises again out of the darkness, he will ride into it gladly, knowing that Cottia and Esca will go with him.

FIN


End file.
